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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE STORY 
OF MY HOUSE 




GEORGE H.^LLWANGl 

AUTHOR OF 
" [HE GARDEN'S STORY ' 



WITH FRONTISPIECE ETCHED BY 

SIDNEY L. SMITH 



These are but my fantasies. 

Montaigne 







I OF 
PYRlGHr 



■C 3l'R90 ,] 

'■■4Cm»n^0s*VV 



NEW YORK 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

MDCCCXCI 






Copyright, 1890, 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 



EPISTLE DEDICATORY. 




here is expressed from the grapes 
that ripen on the sunny slopes 
of Ay a wine called Fine Fleur 
d'Ay blanc — Fine Flower of 
white Ay — a sparkling, golden, perfumed 
nectar, to sip of which is an exhilaration. 

In every ideal home there exists an es- 
sence that likewise diffuses its fragrance — 
the fine flower of noble womanhood, with- 
out which the house is a habitation, not a 
home. 

Alone under the ministering care of 
woman may the routine of daily life be re- 
lieved and varied, and the course of the 
household made to flow free from friction 
and asperity. Caressed by her gentle touch, 
order ranges itself, beauty finds a dwelling- 
place, and peace enters as an abiding guest. 
Pre-eminently it is woman that idealises 
l 



The Story of my House. 



the home, and, with her sweet, refining 
presence, mingled with the joyous laugh of 
children, creates its atmosphere of serenity 
and content. 

To the gentler sex, therefore — to the old 
and to the young, to the dark and to the 
fair, to all who woo for us the sunshine of 
the home — a health in the Fine Flower of 
Ay! 





CONTENTS. 











PAGE 


Epistle Dedicatory 3 


Prologue . 








7 


I. The Perfect House . 








9 


II. Old Oriental Masters 








29 


III. Signs in the Sky . 








46 


IV. The Ideal Haven 








64 


V. When Leaves Grow Sere 








86 


VI. Decorative Decorations 








105 


VII. My Study Windows . 








119 


VIII. My Indoor Garden 








143 


IX. A Blue-Violet Salad . 








170 


X. Footsteps of Spring . 








187 


XI. Magicians of the Shelves — I 






. 205 


XII. Magicians of the Shelves — II 






. 225 


XIII. Authors and Readers 






. 250 


XIV. The Pageant of the Immortals 






. 272 


Epilogue . 








. 285 




PROLOGUE. 




Spring speaks again, and all our woods are stirred, 
And all our wide glad wastes a-flower around. 

Swinburne. 

shaded slope bounds the home- 
J^S stead to the southward, and a 
thick copse, descending rather 
abruptly to the river, flanks the 
grounds in the rear. Screened 
from sun and glare, the grass-plot is always 
a favorite lounging-place during hot weath- 
er. Across the water a west or south wind 
invariably blows, freighted with coolness 
and charged with that indefinable odor 
which the wind gathers from its passage 
through a wood. 

From the trees and bushes and grasses 
along the river banks the air has dusted a 
fragrance; from the leaves, the fern-fronds, 
and the flowers it has extracted an aroma. 
The scent of the swamp honey -suckle 
along the hillside now forms its strongest 
component part. Its perfume is tangible, 



8 The Story of my House. 

fresh, and uncloying — sentient with the de- 
licious breath of the summer — and, I fancy, 
charms the wood-thrushes into sweeter song. 

The west or south wind invariably blows. 
Even when not felt, it may be seen in the as- 
pen's trembling leaves ; so that, however hot 
the day, here a breeze may be always felt or 
seen. Through the trees the river sparkles, 
and through a wider opening may be traced 
its sinuous course until it merges into haze 
and sky. My book remains unopened ; it is 
pleasanter to read the earth and air. The bees 
hum, a wood-dove calls, the soothing roar 
of the rapids rises and falls. So sweet is 
summer air, so caressing are summer sounds. 

How the sails have multiplied on the 
river! Is it the haze or the sudden sunlight 
that has transformed their canvas into un- 
accustomed color ? Yonder a larger vessel, 
of different mold from the pleasure-craft, is 
rounding the river's curve in her cruise up- 
stream. Her clean-cut prow rises high in 
air, her painted canvas is spread, and the 
sunlight strikes the gold of her sides. On- 
ward she sails, graceful as a water-bird, 
tacking at intervals to catch the breeze. At 
once it becomes plain to me — it is no mi- 
rage, no cheat of the atmosphere, but a re- 
ality* Up the river from the lake, through 
the lake from the sea; launched from her 
harbor in distant lands, and laden with her 
precious stores, my ship has come ! 







THE PERFECT HOUSE. 

People who know my house come to like it a little; 
people who merely glance at it see nothing to call for 
comment, and so pass on. . . . 

My house not being a fine house, nor a costly house, 
nor what people call an elegant house, what is there in 
it to describe ? — O. B. Bunce, My House. 




make no claim that the house 
wherein I dwell is a perfect 
one; it is my first house — a 
fledgling. One must build at 
least thrice, it has been truly 
observed, to obtain the perfected dwelling, 
and still there will remain room for im- 
provement. So many things go to make 
up the ideal house, it is beyond human pos- 
sibility to combine them all; while even 
during the process of construction one's 
tastes are liable to change or become sub- 
ject to modification. 

To the most of mankind a single venture 
is sufficient ; only architects build more than 
once for a pastime. For the sole office of 
the architect is to plan; the province of 



io The Story of my House. 

the builder to delay. The asylums teem 
with victims to the vexations of house- 
building. Having money to make and not 
to disburse, with no further care than to 
complete the work in hand with the ut- 
most leisure, the architect and builder pass 
through the ordeal unscathed, and remain 
to lure new victims. One exception I re- 
call. Picturesquely situated on the eastern 
coast, within hearing of the surge and ris- 
ing amid the forest-growth, stands an un- 
tenanted villa. The imposing exterior is 
of massive stone, and all that unlimited 
wealth and taste could contribute has been 
lavished upon the interior. The mansion 
was completed within the specified time, 
but during its construction architect and 
builder both died, the owner living only 
three days after its completion. From the 
placing of the foundation-stone to the pro- 
spective fire in the hearth — from commence- 
ment to completion — who may foresee the 
possibilities ? Ever man proposes while 
Fate disposes. 

Plans look so feasible on paper, and 
building seems so delightfully facile in 
theory — so much time, so much money, 
and your long-dreamed-of castle in Spain 
is a reality. But, like the quest of a Ger- 
man professor I once knew who was 
searching for a wife who must be rich, 
beautiful, young, angelic, and not afraid of 



The Perfect House. 



a mouse, the perfect house is difficult to at- 
tain ; while plans often resemble the sum- 
mer excursions one takes with the mind 
during winter, apparently so easy to carry 
out and yet so unfrequently realized. We 
forget the toilsome climb up the mountain 
where we arrive, perchance, to find the 
view shrouded in mist; or a cold spell sets 
in when we reach the seashore; or heavy 
rains render the long-contemplated angling 
trip a dismal failure. 

If we leave the house to the architect, - 
he builds merely for himself — he builds his 
house, not yours. You must be the ideal- 
ist of your own ideal. " Our so-called 
architects," says Richard Jefferies, " are 
mere surveyors, engineers, educated brick- 
layers, men of hard, straight ruler and 
square, mathematically accurate, and utterly 
devoid of feeling. You call in your practi- 
cal architect, and he builds you a brick 
box. The princes of Italy knew better ; 
they called in the poet and the painter, the 
dreamers, to dream for them." How the 
penetrating insight of Montaigne pierced 
the mask of the architect: " The Merchant 
thrives not but by the licentiousness of 
youth; the Husbandman but by dearth of 
corne; the Architect but by the mine of 
houses!" 

Perhaps the easiest way out of the diffi- 
culty is to secure a house already construct- 



The Story of my House. 



ed that will meet your requirements as 
nearly as may be. But the mere building, 
the foundation, construction, architectural 
details, and interior arrangement are only a 
small part of numerous vital factors that 
should enter into the question of the house 
and home. There are equally the consid- 
erations of situation, neighborhood, access 
sibility, and a score of like important feat- 
ures to be seriously meditated on. One 
can not afford to make mistakes in build- 
ing or in marrying. " In early manhood," 
says Cato, "the master of a family must 
study to plant his ground. As for build- 
ing, he must think a long time about it." 
The external construction is, indeed, the 
least part of building — there is still the 
decorating and the furnishing. 

Wise is he who weighs and ponders 
ere he decides upon the location of his 
house, especially if he would be near the 
town. For in the ideal home I would unite 
many things, including pure air, sufficient 
elevation, pleasant views, the most suitable 
exposure, good soil, freedom from noise, 
and the natural protection from wind af- 
forded by trees. "Let our dwelling be 
lightsome, if possible; in a free air and 
near a garden," is the advice of the philoso- 
pher, Pierre du Moulin. Very apposite are 
old Thomas Fuller's directions for a site — 
"Chiefly choose a wholesome air, for air is a 



The Perfect House. 13 

dish one feeds on every minute, and there- 
fore it need be good." And again : " Light 
(God's eldest daughter) is a principal beauty 
in a building, and a pleasant prospect is to 
be respected." In the chapter of the Es- 
says, on Smells and Odors, the author per- 
tinently observes: "The principall care I 
take, wheresoever I am lodged, is to avoid 
and be far from all manner of filthy, foggy, 
ill - savouring, and unwholesome aires. 
These goodly Cities of strangely seated 
Venice and huge-built Paris, by reason of 
the muddy, sharp, and offending savours 
which they yield; the one by her fennie 
and marish situation, the other by her dur- 
tie uncleannesse and continuall mire, doe 
greatly alter and diminish the favor which 
I bear them." 

All these desiderata are well-nigh im- 
possible to unite in the city. There all 
manner of nuisances necessarily exist — 
manufactories which discharge noxious 
smoke and soot, the clangor of bells and 
whistles, an atmosphere more or less 
charged with unwholesome exhalations. 
This more particularly in summer; in win- 
ter I grant the city has its charms and ad- 
vantages. Wealth may sometimes com- 
bine the delights of urban and rural life, as 
when a large residence plot is retained in 
a pleasant neighborhood of the town. But 
even unlimited means can rarely, procure a 



The Story of my House. 



place of this description, which comes by 
inheritance rather than by choosing, and in 
the end becomes too valuable to retain. 
Besides, however fine the ancestral trees 
and endeared the homestead, it must still 
lack the repose of the country, the free ex- 
panse of sky, the unfettered breadth of the 
fields. 

When I look about me I find the com- 
bination I would attain a difficult one to 
secure in almost any city. If I build in the 
suburbs, upon the most fashionable ave- 
nue, its approaches may be disagreeable 
and the surrounding landscape flat and un- < 
inviting. The opposite quarter of the sub- 
urbs, the main northern residence avenue, 
will be windy during winter. If I locate 
westward there may be factories and car- 
shops to constantly offend the ear; if I 
move eastward unsavory odors may assail, 
and if I select a site in yet another neigh- 
borhood that commends itself for its eleva- 
tion and pleasant society, there may be the 
smoke and soot of neighboring chimneys 
to defile the air and intrude themselves 
unceasingly into my dwelling. The coun- t 
try-seat sufficiently removed from town, I 
and yet comparatively accessible, alone 
may yield, during the greater portion of i 
the year, all the desired qualifications of 
the ideal home. Does not Beranger truly 
sing— j 



The Perfect House. 15 

Cherchons loin du bruit de la ville 
Pour le bonheur un sur asile. 
Seek we far from the city's noise 
A refuge safe for peaceful joys. 

And have not all the poets before him apos- 
trophized the delights of a country life ? 

Why not the town-house, and also the 
country-seat — a hibernaculum for the win- 
ter, and a villeggiatura for the summer? 
Unfortunately, this would involve construct- 
ing two houses, meeting a double building 
liability, harboring two sets of worries ; 
and, moreover, one's library, however 
modest, can not well be disarranged or 
periodically shifted from one place to an- 
other. 

The old Latins were distinguished as 
we well know for their love of the country. 
Virgil, Ovid, Tibullus, and Terence all had 
their country-seats. Horace, in addition to 
the Sabine farm, possessed his cottage at 
Tivoli, and longed for a third resort at Sor- 
rento. Pliny the Younger, and Cicero rode 
seventeen miles from Rome to Tusculum 
daily to gain repose. Pliny's letters attest 
his intense fondness for rural surroundings. 
The holder of numerous country-houses, 
he has described two of them very minute- 
ly, his descriptions giving to posterity the 
most reliable and truthful account of the 
old Roman villas. Of all his villas, includ- 
ing those at Tusculum, Praeneste, Tibur, 



The Story of my House. 



several on Lake Como, and his Laurentine 
and Tuscan resorts, the two latter were his 
especial favorites, whose fascinations he 
never tires of recounting. Especially at- 
tractive is his account of Laurentium : the 
apartments so planned as to command the 
most pleasing views ; the dining-room 
built out into the sea, ever washed by the 
advancing wave ; the terrace before the 
gallery redolent with the scent of violets ; 
the gallery itself so placed that the shadow 
of the building was thrown on the terrace 
in the forenoon ; and at the end of the gal- 
lery " the little garden apartment" looking 
on* one side to the terrace, on the other to 
the sea ; his elaborate bath - rooms and 
dressing-rooms, his tennis-court and tower, 
and his own sleeping-room carefully con- 
structed for the exclusion of noise. "My 
house is for use, and not for show," he ex- 
claims ; "I retire to it for a little quiet 
reading and writing, and for the bodily 
rest which freshens the mind." One side 
of the spacious sitting-room invited the 
morning, the other the afternoon sun. One 
room focused the sunlight the entire day. 
In the walls of this his study was "a 
bookcase for such works as can never be 
read too often." 

The Tuscan villa was on a still more 
extensive scale, the house facing the south, 
and adorned with a broad, long colonnade, 



The Perfect House. 17 

in front of which reposed a terrace embel- 
lished with numerous figures and bounded 
with a hedge of box from whence one de- 
scended to the lawn inclosed with ever- 
greens shaped into a variety of forms. 
This, in turn, he states, was fenced in by a 
box-covered wall rising by step-like ranges 
to the top, beyond which extended the 
green meads, fields, and thickets of the Tus- 
can plain, tempered on the calmest days by 
the breeze from the neighboring Apennines. 
The dining-room on one extremity of the 
terrace commanded the magnificent pros- 
pect, and almost cooled the Falernian. 
There, too, are luxurious summer and win- 
ter rooms, a tennis-court, a hippodrome 
for horse exercise, shaded marble alcoves 
in the gardens, and the play of fountain 
and ripple of running water. The long 
epistle to Domitius Apollinaris, descriptive 
of the Tuscan retreat, he concludes by say- 
ing : " You will hardly think it a trouble to 
read the description of a place which I am 
persuaded would charm you were you to 
see it." 

It was the delightful situation and the 
well cared for gardens of Pliny's country- 
seats, it will be seen, no less than the re- 
fined elegance and the conveniences of the 
splendid houses themselves, of which Pliny 
was mainly his own architect, that rendered 
them so attractive. Assuredly he must 



The Story of my House. 



have been a most accomplished house- 
builder and artist-architect ; for, in addition 
to the many practical and artistic features 
he has enumerated with such precision, he 
specifies a room so contrived that when he 
was in it he seemed to be at a distance 
from his own house. But even Pliny's 
wealth and inventive resources, much as 
they contributed to his comfort, could not 
combine everything. He could not bring 
Laurentium to him ; he must needs go to 
her. The daily ride of seventeen miles and 
back to the city must have been irksome 
during bad weather ; and even amid all his 
luxury and beauty of scenery he bewails 
the lack of running water at Laurentium. 
Luxurious and convenient as were the old 
Roman villas, they were built with only 
one story, in which respect at least the 
modern house is an improvement upon 
the house of the ancients ; and there yet 
remain other beautiful sites than those 
along the Tyrrhenian sea or in the vale of 
Ustica. 

Whether the house be situated in the 
country or in the town, whether it be large 
or small, it is apparent that the site and the 
exposure are of primary importance. So 
far as situation is concerned, a rise of ground 
and an easterly exposure, with the living- 
rooms on the south side, is undoubtedly 
the pleasantest. During the summer the 



\ 



The Perfect House. 



prevailing west wind blows the dust of the 
street in the opposite direction ; during 
winter the living-rooms are open to the 
light and sun. The comfort of the house 
during summer, and the outer prospect 
from within during winter, will depend in 
no small degree upon the proper planting 
of the grounds. 

Deciduous trees, and here the variety is 
great, will shade and cool it in summer, 
evergreens will furnish and warm its sur- 
roundings in winter ; while for a great 
portion of the year the hardy flower-gar- 
den, including the shrubberies that screen 
the grounds from the highway, and the 
climbers which disburse their bloom and 
fragrance over its verandas and porches, 
will contribute largely to its beauty and 
attractiveness. 

Somehow I can not look upon my 
house by itself, without including as acces- 
sories, nay, as essential parts of it, its out- 
ward surroundings and external Nature — 
the woods whence its joists and rafters 
were hewed, the earth that supplied its mor- 
tar, brick, and stone, the coal whence it de- 
rives its light and heat, the trees that ward 
off the wind in winter and shield it from the 
sun in summer, the garden which contrib- 
utes its flowers, the orchards and vineyards 
that supply its fruits, the teeming fields and 
pastures that continuously yield the largess 
2 



20 The Story of my House. 

of their corn, and flocks, and herds. From 
each of these my house and I receive a 
tithe. 

My purpose, however, even were I able 
to do the subject justice, is not to treat of 
the adornment of gardens, of architectural 
styles, expression of purpose in building, 
or the proper exterior form for the Ameri- 
can town-house and country villa. There 
remain, nevertheless, some features of the 
interior of the home to which I would fain 
call attention, though even here, more than 
in the matter of the exterior, opinions ne- 
cessarily differ. Every house, methinks, 
should possess its distinctive character, its 
individual sentiment or expression ; and 
this depends less upon the architect and 
the professional decorator than upon the 
taste reflected by the occupants. And yet 
there is nothing so bizarre or atrocious 
that it will not please some ; there exists 
nothing so perfect as to please all. 

Shall the ideal house be large or small ? 
Excellent results may follow in either case 
in intelligent, thoughtful hands. Where 
money is merely a secondary object, then 
the great luxuriously furnished rooms, the 
lofty ceilings, the grand halls and stair- 
cases, the picture gallery, the music, bill- 
iard, and ball rooms, the house of mag- 
nificent distances and perspectives. Still 
man is not content ; for such a house, to 



The Perfect House. 



be beautiful, calls for constant care, a retinue 
of servants, a blaze of light, a round of 
visitors and entertainments to populate its 
vast apartments and render it companion- 
able. The house to entertain in and the 
house to live in are generally two sepa- 
rate things ; but, of the two, you want to 
live in your house more than to entertain 
in it. 

Doubtless, even to those possessed of 
abundant means, the medium-sized house, 
sufficiently roomy for all ordinary purposes 
and yet cosy enough for family comfort, is 
the most satisfactory. In daily domestic 
life you do not become lost and absorbed 
in its magnitude ; and for the matter of 
entertainments, on a large scale, you always 
have the resource of a "hall," with no 
further trouble beyond that of issuing the 
invitations and liquidating the bills. In 
the ideal dwelling-house of medium size 
even this will be dispensed with, while 
still preserving the charm of privacy — one 
has simply to add a supplementary supper- 
room and an ample ball-room, to be thrown 
open only on special occasions for the ac- 
commodation of the overflow. Thus it 
would be possible to avoid a barn to live 
in, and a cote to entertain in. 

The great thing in house planning is to 
think ahead, and still think ahead. The 
hall which looks so spacious on paper is 



The Story of my House. 



sure to contract, and ordinary-sized rooms 
will shrink perceptibly when they come to 
be furnished. It is important that the 
spaces between the doors and windows, 
the proportionate height of the doors and 
windows, the many little conveniencies, 
and innumerable minor yet major details, 
like the placing of mantels, registers, chan- 
deliers and side-lights, be planned by the 
occupant, and not left to the mercy of 
the architect. The latter will place the 
mantel on the side of a long, narrow room, 
thereby diminishing the width several feet, 
when it should go at the end. He will 
hang the doors so they will bump together, 
or open on the side you do not want them 
to open on. If he concede you a spacious 
hall and library, he will clip on the vestibule, 
or be a miser when he doles out the space 
for the stairway landing or the butler's 
pantry. And what architect will stop to 
think of that most important of household 
institutions — a roomy, convenient, con- 
cealed catch-all, or rather a series of catch- 
alls ! 

Even so simple a contrivance as an in- 
visible small wardrobe in the wall adjoin- 
ing the entrance — a receptacle for hats, 
wraps, and waterproofs — he has never yet 
devised. Every hall must of necessity be 
littered up with that hideous contrivance, 
a hat-rack, in a more or less offensive form, 



The Perfect House. 23 

when at a touch a panel in the wainscot 
might fly open to joyfully engulf the outer 
vesture of visitors. You must see your 
house planned and furnished with the in- 
ward eye ere the foundation is laid, and 
exercise the clairvoyant's art if you would 
not be disappointed when it is finally ready 
for habitation. The question of closet- 
room is best left to the mistress of the 
house, otherwise it is certain to be stinted ; 
and it were economy in the end to secure 
the services of a competent chef to plan the 
kitchen and its accessories — that tributary 
of the home through whose savory or un- 
savory channels so great a wave of human 
enjoyment or dolor flows. 

It is with houses very much as it is with 
gardens — no two are ever precisely alike ; 
so far at least as the interior of the former 
is concerned. Both reflect, or should re- 
flect, through a hundred different ways and 
niceties of adjustment and arrangement, the 
individual tastes of those who are instru- 
mental in their creation. The ideal house 
must first be conceived by those who are 
to dwell in it, modeled according to their 
requirements, mirroring their ideas, their 
refinement, and their conceptions of the 
useful and the beautiful. By different per- 
sons these ends are approached by different 
ways. So long as we attain the desired 
end, the route thereto is of little conse- 



24 The Story of my House. 

quence. But in the ideal house, it may be 
observed, a little money and a good deal of 
taste go a very great way. 

All the eyes of Argus and all the clubs 
of Hercules must need be yours, would you 
see your house perfectly planned and per- 
fectly constructed. The terrible gantlet one 
has to run ! He who builds should have 
nothing to divert his mind from the task. It 
is the work of a life-time crowded into a 
year. 

And when all is done, and the lights 
are turned on and the house is peopled 
with its guests, who is there that is fully 
content with the result of his labor ? who 
that finds in the fruition the full promise of 
the bloom ? The perfect house in itself ex- 
ists no more than the perfect man or wo- 
man. We can at best set up an exalted 
standard of excellence to approximate as 
nearly as we may. It is very much in 
building as it is in life, where content with 
what we have is, after all, the true source 
of happiness. "I long ago lost a hound, 
a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am 
still on their trail," is the burden of Wal- 
den. How many of us are not likewise in 
quest of the something that ever eludes ? 
When we think we have come up with 
the fox, it is but his shadow we seize ; he 
himself has already vanished round the ra- 
vine. We follow, but may not overtake, 



The Perfect House. 25 

at will, the siren that the poet beckoned for 
in vain : 

Ah, sweet Content ! where doth thine harbor hold ? 

Is it in churches with religious men 
Which please the gods with prayers manifold, 

And in their studies meditate it then ? 
Whether thou dost in heaven or earth appear, 

Be where thou wilt, thou wilt not harbor here.* 

What philosopher among all who have 
moralized and analyzed has discovered the 
sought-for stone ? Amiel failed in the pur- 
suit : " I am always waiting for the woman 
and the work which shall be capable of 
taking entire possession of my soul, and of 
becoming my end and aim. " ' ' A man's hap- 
piness," says Alphonse Karr, in an apothegm 
worthy of La Bruyere, "consists in that 
which he has not got, or that which he no 
longer has." The coveted bauble palls 
when it is finally ours, the "dove" escapes, 
and we all grow old. Absolute happi- 
ness flees when we enter our 'teens. Me- 
thinks the French poet Chenier has resolved 
the experience of most of us with reference 
to a certain phase of life as felicitously as 
any of those who have endured and felt : 

Tout homme a ses douleurs. Mais aux yeux de ses 

freres 
Chacun d'un front serein deguise ses miseres, 
Chacun ne plaint que soi. Chacun dans son ennui 
Envie un autre humain qui se plaint comme lui. 

* Barnabe Barnes. 



26 The Story of my House. 

Nul des autres mortels ne mesure les peines, 
Qu'ils savent tous cacher comme il cache les siennes, 
Et chacun, l'ceil en pleurs, en son cceur douloureux 
Se dit : Excepte moi, tout le monde est heureux. 

Each man his sorrows hath ; but, in his brothers' eyes, 
Each one with brow serene his troubles doth disguise. 
Each of himself complains ; each one, in weariness, 
Envies a fellow-man who mourns in like distress. 

None measureth the pains that all as well conceal 
As he himself doth hide the griefs that he doth feel ; 
And each, with tearful eye, says in his sorrowing heart, 
Excepting me, the world with happiness hath part. 

Yet, I like to think, and cherish the thought, 
when the cloud reveals no silver lining, that 
• however disappointing some phases of life 
may be, some experiences of human char- 
acter, there are bright days and pleasant 
places ahead in the future, somewhere and 
sometime. Happiness is coy at the best, 
fickle in bestowing her favors; and we find 
her the more delightful, possibly, in that, like 
the sunshine, she comes and goes. We 
awaken some morning to find her present, 
and the next morning she has flown. " It 
sometimes seemeth that when we least 
think on her she is pleased to sport with 
us." So many she has to minister to that 
she has necessarily but a brief period to 
remain. Still I see her ever laughing with 
the children at play, and find her lingering 
where industry abides. Beside the humble 
board of the laborer she is often found, 
while frequently passing by the homes of 



The Perfect House. 27 

the rich. Over gardens and fields she hov- 
ers on pleasant days of spring, and on 
blustering winter nights I hear the rustle of 
her wings above the poet's page. The 
sunshine that sifts through the window, 
warming and gilding all my surround- 
ings, is mine to-day ; to-morrow it may 
stream elsewhere. It is all the brighter 
when it comes ; but to possess it I must 
open wide the casement to let in the 
beams. 

Climbing with the sunny Rector of Ev- 
ersley to the lonely tarn amid the hills — you 
have read and admired Chalk-Stream Stud- 
ies; or, if not, you have that enjoyment in 
store — I recall the moral that adorns this 
delightful essay. "What matter," he hap- 
pily reasons, "if, after two hours of such 
enjoyment, he (the angler) goes down 
again into the world of man with empty 
creel or with a dozen pounders or two- 
pounders, shorter, gamer, and redder- 
fleshed than ever came out of Thames or 
Kennet? What matter? If he has not 
caught them, he might have caught them ; 
he has been catching them in imagination 
all the way up ; and if he be a minute phi- 
losopher, he holds that there is no falser 
proverb than that devil's beatitude, ' Blessed 
is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall 
not be disappointed.' Say, rather: 'Bless- 
ed is he who expecteth everything, for he 



28 The Story of my House. 

enjoys everything once, at least; and, if it 
falls out true, twice also.' " 

And with this gentle spirit, despite his 
many trials, Charles Kingsley lived on 
through life, shedding sunshine and cheer 
from the vine-embowered rectory at Evers- 
ley. His house was large enough for his 
personal comforts, for the entertainment 
of his chosen friends, and for the satisfac- 
tion of his domestic requirements ; and this 
sufficed. Reflecting the "sweetness and 
light" of his own nature, it became the 
perfect house to him for the reason that he 
was satisfied with his surroundings. The 
ideal home is largely the handiwork of the 
contented mind; and if before we build 
we learn to extract the finer essences of 
things, we may then pluck the rose where 
others only find the thorn. 





II. 
OLD ORIENTAL MASTERS. 

It is certain that colors exercise an influence over us 
to the extent of rendering us gay or sad, according to 
their shades. — Voyage Autour de ma Chambre. 

3HE floors of my house, where 
hard - wood floors exist, are 
shellacked. This imparts an ex- 
cellent finish without darkening 
the wood, and the subsequent 
care of the floor is slight. Beneath the 
rugs the finish is sand-papered to prevent 
them from sliding. Oiling floors is objec- 
tionable, the wood turning dark, and ne- 
cessitating almost daily going over with a 
damp and a dry cloth to keep them clean. 
Waxing is a labor, and renders the floors 
slippery. Varnishing makes a very smooth 
surface, easily marred, the gloss soon 
wearing in the least exposed places. 

My floors must, first of all, be subservi- 
ent and subordinate to my rugs. By shift- 
ing my rugs I immediately change the color 
of a room, the expression of my house; I 



30 The Story of my House. 

may cool a room in summer or warm it in 
winter at will. Beautiful as beautiful paint- 
ings are some of the antique Persian and 
Conia prayers, and the marvelously wrought 
Yourdes and ancient Coulas. I believe there 
is no comprehensive book on rugs. Some 
enterprising publisher should send a capa- 
ble artist to Asia for a year and publish an 
exhaustive edition de luxe to supply a long- 
felt want. An artistic work of this nature 
would be as desirable as an edition of King 
Solomon's lost book on gems. For color 
and color-blending we must go to the Ori- 
entals ; they have found its soul. Who else 
could blend greens and blues so felicitously, 
or place the different reds in riotous juxta- 
position, or combine the whole gamut of 
browns with the entire octave of yellows ? 
They play with colors as a musician plays 
with the keys of an instrument. They sound 
no false notes, they strike no discords. I 
speak of the art as exhibited by the best 
masters. There are plenty of daubs and 
crudities, it is true, a single specimen of 
which will throw a whole house into an en- 
tasia. There is poor sculpture and there are 
poor paintings. The finer examples of the 
loom deserve to be stamped with the artist's 
name just as much as a canvas of Gerome 
or a love-song of Hafiz. 

There can be nothing more artistic, there 
is nothing more seductive than these old 



Old Oriental Masters. 31 

Asiatic hand-paintings. I am drawn and 
fascinated by their weird beauty. What 
charms do they not reveal ! what multi- 
plicity yet harmony of hue and design ! 
Though not unfrequently repeating them- 
selves in the same piece, color and design 
never tire. They have their recurrent beat 
and rhythm, like the harmonious cadence of 
the Pantoum. This large Afghan rug, for 
instance, mellow with use and time, the 
general tone of which resembles that of a 
zircon, is composed of innumerable shades 
of red, so many shades I can scarcely count 
them, one shade melting into another shade 
— shades of shades— till the eye renounces 
the task of pursuit. When examined close- 
ly, I find even magenta has been employed 
by the craftsman, to become in his hands 
a medium of beauty. A European pro- 
duces a stiff-set pattern, the Oriental a maze 
of which one never tires. There is always 
an unsuspected figure or color to reveal it- 
self, an oddity to suddenly appear, new 
lights and new shadows. 

In coloring, some of the Afghans touch 
closely upon the Bokharas, though the 
former are less closely woven, but are gen- 
erally less set, and more pleasing in design. 
As a class, I think the Bokharas are over- 
estimated, their usual lack of borders or in- 
distinct bordering giving them an unfin- 
ished look, despite their fineness of texture 



}2 The Story of my House. 

and the gloss of their* terra-cotta shades. 
My large thick blue Bokhara, however, is a 
striking departure from the type, and I 
never tire of admiring its artistic frame and 
its kaleidoscopic tints. The larger red Bok- 
haras, where the pattern is fine, the texture 
thin and silky, and the rug straight, are 
very rich and handsome used as full single 
portieres. But a rug when hung, or used 
as a portiere, must be something entirely 
out of the ordinary to be in keeping, rugs 
in all such cases virtually competing with 
and taking the place of old tapestries. The 
substitute, therefore, should afford equal 
delight to the eye. I turn this closely- 
woven, heavy Shiraz, with the nap running 
toward the light, and its forest of fluctuant 
palm leaves is blue. I spread it in the re- 
verse direction to see its color change like a 
tourmaline, and the field become resilient 
with soft rich greens. Dusty, soiled, and 
dingy when I first saw it unrolled from the 
bale, it is now a gem, alive to every change 
of light and shade. Time has subdued 
its original strong colors. These delicate 
gleams of buff that dance upon the border 
were once a pronounced brown-crimson, 
while the original yellows of some of the 
figures have softened to pale primrose. Its 
blues and greens are alone unfaded, though 
refined by age. The artist painted better 
than he knew ; or did he designedly leave 



Old Oriental Masters. 33 

the finishing touches to the master-hand of 
Time ? 

How strange this patch of shadow and 
yonder gleam of light in this ancient Tiflis, 
the shadow shifting to light and the light 
darkening to shadow, as I reverse my po- 
sition. The cunning designer has suddenly 
reversed the nap in the center, and hence 
its puzzling changes. I marvel who has 
knelt upon these Conia prayers, in whose 
glowing centers four shades of blue and 
four shades of red are fused so impercepti- 
bly you may scarcely tell where one shade 
ends and another begins — 

The mossy marbles rest 

On the knees that they have pressed 

In their bloom. 

Tender tones of olive, yellow, and blue 
lurk in some of the old Coulas, and suave 
tints of peach-blow and of rose gleam in the 
patterns of the rarer Kermans. Generally 
speaking, the Coulas possess little claim to 
distinction. But the finer old examples are 
a marked exception, many resembling the 
Yourdes prayers, while some are as vel- 
vety and intricate in design as the old 
Meccas. My most admired Coula (4X5) 
in its pattern and coloring might have been 
copied from an ancient cathedral window. 

This yellow Daghestan, coined four-score 
years ago, is a veritable field of the cloth of 



34 The Story of my House. 

gold. There are also the precious old Per- 
sian Sennas, with a diamond flashing in the 
center, and a certain weave of Anatolians 
with a bloom upon them like that of a ripe 
plum, so velvety one wants to stroke them 
just for the pleasure of the caress. When 
viewed against the nap, they look almost 
black, the colors hidden by the heavy fleece 
till revealed by another angle of view. 
What strange conceits, what fine-spun 
webs of tracery, what fillets, tangles, and 
tessellations of color do they not disclose ! 

The command in the Khoran prohibit- 
ing its followers from reproducing the image 
of living things has not been without its 
pronounced advantage. It has served to 
develop the infinite beauty of geometrical 
design. Color-study no edict of Mohammed 
could banish ; it is a sixth sense reflected 
from the sky and atmosphere — a priceless 
gift of Allah ! There has long been want- 
ing a well-defined scale to describe and 
place the different shades intelligibly, just 
as there exists a standard of weights and 
measures comprehensible by all. Artists 
have one set of terms, shopmen and milli- 
ners another ; the average person can not 
define a shade. Who can place the hues 
of a sunset sky ? There needs to be a 
color-congress to form a closer chromatic 
scale, and the task belongs by right to the 
Orientals. 



Old Oriental Masters. 35 

As a class, the Kazaks are not as desir- 
able as many other makes, design and col- 
orings frequently being so obtrusive, and 
the weave usually being marked by coarse- 
ness. Yet some Kazaks there are of re- 
markable beauty. My best examples of Ka- 
zak art are done in cardinal and old gold. 
The one is an antique, 6x7, thin and 
finely woven, the ground-work in three 
shades of red, with the V tree pattern " raised 
in black upon the field, and a storm of 
white flakes scattered over it. The other 
is a very old piece of nearly similar size, in 
perfect preservation, so heavy that to lift it 
is a task. Its luster is marvelous. The 
pattern is one of the most admired of all 
the Kazak patterns when the colors are 
happily employed, consisting of squares 
within squares or octagons variously dis- 
persed upon the field, the largest figure in 
the center. The colors consist simply of 
four shades of yellow, the exquisite play of 
light and shade produced by the glossy 
texture of the wool employed and the fre- 
quent shiftings of the nap heightening the 
effect. It is my Asian Diaz, and my ship 
contained it among her precious stores. 

Always among the most beautiful of 
Persian and Turkish rugs are those of vari- 
ous makes not often met with, that, excep- 
tionally heavy and glossy, possess a simi- 
lar tone to that of the Kazak just specified 
3 



}6 The Story of my House. 

— blendings and interblendings of russet, 
chestnut, fawn, and fallow. To me their 
sleek and velvety pile, their striped and 
spotted surfaces, their turmoil of tawny 
hues, possess an attraction akin to that of 
the wild beasts of the remote Eastern jun- 
gle. Looking at them, I instinctively re- 
call a carnivorous animal — fascinating in his 
fulvous beauty, supreme in his splendor and 
his sheen. These graceful arabesques, are 
they not like the curving haunches of some 
huge cat of the desert ? These lucent spots 
and markings, do they not resemble the 
shimmering pelt of a couchant carnivore? 
A strange fascination they possess for me ; a 
subdued ferity, even to the animal odor that 
clings about their lambent folds ; and, some- 
times, the gleams as of feline eyes that peer 
from the dots of their borders. 

The Yourdes are among the few weaves 
that do not acquire an additional value from 
silkiness. Time mellows their naturally 
soft shades, and use imparts to them a 
slight luster. But their great value consists 
in detail of design and contrast of a few 
colors — black and dark bands on a gray- 
white ground for the border, the plain 
prayer-disks usually of gray, blue, green, 
or maroon. The warp and nap being rela- 
tively thin, and color and design not being 
dependent upon strong or direct light to 
emphasize them, they are excellently adapt- 



Old Oriental Masters. 37 

ed for hangings — indeed, they are too ten- 
der and precious to be placed upon the floor. 
The antique Yourdes prayers usually come 
in sizes about 4x6, and are deservedly 
among the most prized among Oriental 
textiles. Some of the finer Persians are 
equally suitable for hangings. By Persians 
I refer to what is known as " Persian 
prayers," the term being used to designate 
a certain class of Persian fabrics with cen- 
ters of self-colors, to which, for some un- 
explained reason, a more definite name is 
not given. More strictly speaking, with 
double disks, the larger one plain and the 
smaller partially embroidered or figured, 
the arabesque "a" and typical Shiraz fig- 
ure generally present in the border. These 
Persians are recognizable at a glance. Can 
we wonder the Moslem is so resigned to 
prayer with such prie-Dieus to kneel upon ! 
Under the term Daghestan are lumped 
the makes of this and numerous other dis- 
tricts, the designs of which are somewhat 
similar. There are very many fine true 
Daghestans and Kubas, as well as very 
many poor ones, the old examples being 
relatively much handsomer than the mod- 
ern. The ordinary Daghestan border re- 
peats itself far too often, and its common- 
ness mars many an otherwise valuable 
work of art. Next to the Meccas, the 
Daghestans are probably among the most 



}S The Story of my House. 

crooked of the products of Eastern looms, 
and numberless specimens of extraordinary 
sheen and rare design and coloring are 
virtually spoiled on this account. A long 
strip frequently has a horse-shoe curve, and 
even very small pieces are often so much 
broader at one end as to prove positively 
distressing to the sense of proportion. 

The finer Meccas, distinguished for ex- 
treme softness and silkiness, combined with 
intricacy and pronounced individuality of 
design, are generally not only very crooked, 
but gathered and puffed at the corners as 
well. A straight Mecca one rarely sees 
except in dreams. This is to be deplored, 
for their lovely arabesques and gracious 
fantasies are not to be met with else- 
where. A search for absolute geomet- 
rical precision in Oriental rugs, however, 
would be like Kaphira's pursuit of the gold- 
en ball. They are made and painted by 
hand, and not cut out by machine. There- 
in consists their enchantment. Neverthe- 
less, one should only look for and secure 
comparatively straight specimens ; the very 
crooked, the very crude, and the very glar- 
ing are worthless at any price. ' ' A cur's 
tail," says a Turkish adage, "may be 
warmed and pressed and bound round with 
ligatures, and after a twelve years' labor be- 
stowed upon it, still it will retain its natural 
form. " The dog in the adage was intend- 



Old Oriental Masters. 39 

ed, not for a Christian, but for a rug. No 
wetting, stretching and tacking will remove 
its aged seams and wrinkles — 

What nature hath not taught, no art can frame : 
Wild born be wild still, though by force you tame.* 

Distinct from all other productions are 
the Kourdestans, notably the large anchor- 
pattern. These are difficult to manage, 
however, the design being so striking. 
Very large figures or very glaring colors 
are on this account to be avoided. They 
tyrannize over their companions, or clash 
with surrounding objects. The eye is per- 
petually directed to them and they disturb 
the sense of repose. Many specimens of 
the Carabaghs are remarkable for their 
beautiful combination of colors, especially 
in the blending of reds, olives, and blues. 
The nap is generally very heavy, and the 
wool employed not unfrequently of extreme, 
glossiness, imparting almost an oily look to 
the surface. The rather large hexagonal 
figures, moreover, without being glaring 
are usually artistic and striking. Hand- 
some are many of the Persian camel's-hair 
rugs, unique in design and usually of very 
subdued colors. 

The Cashmeres or Somaks are lacking 
in animation compared with many other 

* Thomas Campion, Third Booke of Ayres. 



40 The Story of my House. 

weaves. Individuality they possess, but 
neither sheen, softness of texture, nor 
marked grace of design. For the dining- 
room, the most serviceable rugs are the 
large India, and the Turkish Ouchaks, 
though when obtainable some of the finer 
large Khorassans and Persians are equally 
desirable. Both of the latter are finer than 
the Ouchaks, and old pieces possess a 
brilliant luster which the Ouchaks lack. 
The fine large thick India rugs are among 
the most magnificent in the world, soft as 
a houri's cheek, and diapered and jeweled 
with every shade of color ; yet harmonious 
as the play of an opal. It is impossible to 
conceive of more superb color-blending. 

While age is unquestionably an impor- 
tant factor in the beauty of a rug, one should 
by no means cast aside a new rug if the 
example be exceptionally fine, and its de- 
sign or coloring may not be obtained in an 
antique. It will require time, I admit, to 
develop its beauties. But by subjecting it 
to light and constant use its original crude- 
ness will gradually depart, and each year of 
service will heighten its bloom. Against 
the crude new fabric must be placed the far 
more objectionable form of "antique," torn 
and thread-bare from rough usage, or soiled 
and faded beyond redemption. Neither 
may it be amiss to caution the novice, and 
many so-styled amateurs, against the not 



Old Oriental Masters. 41 

unfrequent practice of dealers — aye, of mer- 
chants in Constantinople, Ispahan, and 
even Mecca itself— of painting old rugs to 
mask their sordid condition, and gloze over 
their hoary antiquity. 

Could the history of an old rug be 
traced, what a tale might it not unfold ! — 
the Adventures of a Guinea were nothing 
in comparison. Venerable before it was 
secured by the itinerant collector in some 
remote province, how many vicissitudes 
and changes has it not passed through! 
Lashed to the backs of patient dromedaries 
goaded by the spears of fierce dragomen; 
borne under the heat of a tropical sun amid 
the toilsome march of the caravan; and 
escaping the rapine of plundering tribes, it 
arrived at the great marts of the East- 
Here, unstrapped from the bale, it passed to 
the bazaars, or the vast warerooms of the 
merchantmen. There, perchance, its lovely 
sheen caught the eye of a calculating mid- 
dleman, who purchased the bale to secure 
the prize, passing it in turn to a third. Or, 
while ransacking the treasures of a Stam- 
boul bazaar it was, perhaps, admired by a 
rich profligate — a bauble for a new-found 
flame. Or, did it figure in the collection of 
some noted connoisseur whose effects on 
his demise passed into unconversant or in- 
different hands ? Youth and beauty may 
have reposed upon it, and old age admired 



42 The Story of my House. 

its bewitching hues. It may have over- 
heard many a lover's tale; it may once 
have graced a pasha's wall. 

In fine Oriental rugs mere size seldom 
governs their value, this being dependent 
upon intrinsic beauty and rarity. Of course, 
a splendid large piece is more valuable than 
a similar example half its size, although the 
fine large piece may not be worth the rarer 
small one of some other make. Oddity 
and rarity, when combined with beauty, 
are the strongest factors in the value of a 
rug. A sage-green or mauve centered 
Yourdes, 6x4, may be without price, as 
a small Rembrandt may command a hun- 
dred times the price of a canvas double 
its size. It all depends upon the artist. 
Neither is thickness nor silkiness a necessary 
factor in the value of a rug. Depth of pile 
is certainly desirable in very many makes, 
a heavy piece keeping its place upon the 
floor far better than a thin one. Silkiness 
is likewise valuable in most cases; it im- 
parts additional life, and enhances the play 
of the color facets. But in rugs like the 
rarer Yourdes and some of the old Persians 
and Koulas, neither depth of pile nor ex- 
traordinary luster govern their value. These 
are paintings — old masters — that should be 
hung, to be admired like a picture or a 
stained-glass window, and the eye revel in 
their beauty. 



Old Oriental Masters. 43 

But my rugs are more than mere foci of 
color and revelations of Eastern luxury. 
They are, above all, examples of a rare 
handicraft; enduring expressions of artistic 
skill of various times and various peoples. 
They thus become sentient instead of simply 
material, their exuberance of hue and opu- 
lence of design representing the most con- 
summate art, and appealing equally to me 
through the various motives of human in- 
dustry, human interest, and human thought. 
In them are incorporated the sense of the 
beautiful as interpreted by the canons of 
Oriental art, a distinct artistic motive and 
theme underlying the technical finish and 
manual skill of the craftsman. Nor is spir- 
itual quality less reflected in these master- 
pieces than the fine aestheticism with which 
they are pervaded ; they express equally a 
religious symbolism of the Oriental mind, 
and the mystic rites observed in the mosque 
of Islam. Just as painting and sculpture 
are representative arts of Christian peoples, 
so these marvelous blendings of form and 
color are typical of the individuality of the 
Mohammedan alien race. 

Endless is their variety. Independent 
of the diversity of the different wools 
employed, each district has its character- 
istic patterns, its peculiar weaves, and often 
its distinguishing colors and color-combi- 
nations which are its individual right and 



44 The Story of my House. 

inheritance, and which other districts may 
not reproduce without incurring the op- 
probrium attached to the plagiarist. Ana- 
tolia may not borrow from Bokhara, nor 
Daghestan from Beloochistan. Nor may one 
rug of a district be an exact reproduction 
of another rug of the same district. There 
may be a resemblance, it is true ; but each 
valuable example will be found to possess 
a stamp of originality — the genius of the 
artist — which gives it its value and con- 
stitutes the difference between the mere 
commercial product and the enduring work 
of art. Thou shalt not purloin the work of 
another's brain ! is a commandment em- 
bossed upon the loom of the Oriental — a 
law of the Medes and Persians generally 
observed unto this day. 

Valuable as a well-chosen collection of 
porcelains is a well-chosen collection of rugs. 
While neither may be dispensed with as 
art objects, and both afford a constant de- 
light to the eye and the sense of the beau- 
tiful, it may be said that textiles have the 
advantage over porcelains in that they can 
not break, and that they combine utility 
with equal charm and more extended color. 
It is, withal, a satisfaction to know that 
every footfall upon their luxurious pile and 
every beam of sunlight that streams upon 
them only serve to increase their value and 
heighten their beauty. 



Old Oriental Masters. 45 

In the course of time, no doubt — aye, 
at no distant day, as fine old specimens 
become more and more rare and occupy, 
as they deserve, a still more exalted place 
in the domain of art — we will have exhibi- 
tions of Oriental rugs, as we have exhib- 
its of paintings and statuary to-day. The 
appreciative and wealthy amateur who, in 
a single purchase, recently expended nine- 
teen thousand dollars for twelve specimens 
of the Asiatic weaver's art — specimens that 
may not now be duplicated — will then be 
envied for his foresight and the cheapness 
of his purchase. 

To form a fine, varied, and extensive 
collection of rugs, however, is the work of 
years. As Paganini declared, after a life- 
time of study, that he had just begun to be 
acquainted with his violin, so the connois- 
seur may say with regard to the textiles he 
loves so well. For every piece should be 
like a painting, perfect of its kind, artistic 
in design, harmonious in color ; and to 
combine the desired qualifications without 
incongruities or repetition of borders and 
patterns is to tread no primrose path. Not 
only a concent of color and design is requi- 
site in each single example, but rarity, lus- 
ter, age, good condition, and individuality 
— a combination not easily obtainable. 

But my ship contained many straight 
and beautiful rugs among her stores ! 




III. 
SIGNS IN THE SKY. 

Nunquam imprudentibus imber obfuit. 

Virgil, Georgics, I, v. 373. 

rooking out through the windows 
of my house upon the sunset 
sky, I am often enabled to frame 
a weather report for the mor- 
row; for, in his rising and his 
setting, the sun has a message to convey, 
sometimes written in type that is legible to 
all, sometimes in hieroglyphics that the or- 
dinary observer may not decipher. Yonder 
blazing fire in the west and warm orange 
after-glow tell me I may expect fair weather, 
just as the leaden cloud which screens the 
sinking sun apprises me of coming storm. 
But to offset one aspect of the plainly let- 
tered sky, there are a score more difficult to 
read, while, at best, we are liable to err in 
our interpretations where the weather is 
concerned. 

Yet, trying as it often is, in this latitude 
especially, how could we dispense with its 



Signs in the Sky. 47 

vagaries ? Sunshine, by all means ! but we 
would scarcely appreciate the sun if it al- 
ways shone, even could vegetation and hu- 
manity exist under unclouded skies. 

Were all the year one constant sunshine, wee 

Should have no flowres; 
All would be drought and leanness; not a tree 

Would make us bowres.* 

It has been observed before now that we 
are always talking about the weather, al- 
ways interested in it, always trying to fore- 
tell it, always grumbling at it, or delighted 
with it. Without the changes of the 
weather the world would go all awry. 
There would be no more guessing or prog- 
nosticating. Conversation must come to a 
standstill ; if not to a full stop, at least to an 
awkward pause. When there is nothing 
else to talk about there is always the weath- 
er. It is the oil of conversation's wheel. 
How many a pleasant acquaintance dates 
from a weather remark ! Simply as a con- 
versational factor I have no doubt it has 
helped on innumerable marriages. But it 
is ever too hot or too cold, too damp or 
too dry, too cloudy or too sunshiny. If one 
can not openly anathematize his neighbor, 
he may damn the weather; faint, indeed, is 
its praise. With a bright sun shining, a 
purple haze on the hills, the thermometer at 

* Henry Vaughn, Silex Scintillans. 



The Story of my House. 



50 , and the atmosphere exhilarating as 
champagne, still the lament will arise that 
we are not enveloped with a blanket of 
snow. Just the day for a walk, when one 
may start out dry-shod to inhale the stimu- 
lating air and bask in voluptuous sunlight ! 
But the fickle weather-vane suddenly 
veers, and north wind and snow are ex- 
changed for south wind and balm ; the 
croakers have their turn. 

There is reason to believe that the 
weather repeats itself in a general way at 
regular intervals of seven or ten years, more 
or less. Statistics are said to confirm this 
statement, and it gives us reason to hope 
that when our records shall cover longer 
periods and shall be more carefully and 
fully compiled, we may obtain considerable 
insight into the weather programme for the 
coming year. That one extreme follows 
another is perhaps the surest and most 
valuable weather indicator we have. An 
inordinate degree of warmth is generally 
followed by a corresponding degree of cold ; 
a period of extraordinary coolness by a con- 
trasting period of heat. The amount of 
water and heat in the world is always the 
same, though to human observation the ex- 
tremes of temperature are capriciously dis- 
tributed. If it is passing cold here, it is pass- 
ing warm somewhere else. If we get an 
overplus of wet this month we receive an 



Signs in the Sky. 49 

overplus of dry next month, or some month 
after. Nature will surely balance her ledger 
sooner or later ; the difficulty is to tell when 
she will do it. 

Restless and impatient, man is continu- 
ally seeking change. What could supply 
this inherent craving in the breast of man- 
kind so happily as the weather ? The old 
adage, "Tis an ill wind blows no man 
good," is daily verified. This change to 
piercing cold means one hundred thousand 
tons more of coal for the furnaces of each of 
the great cities ; this hot wave, one hundred 
thousand tons more of ice to their refrigera- 
tors. The mild winter that brings a scowl 
upon the dry-goods merchant's face is a 
benison to the laborer; the east wind that 
puts out the inland furnace fires may blo\y 
the disabled vessel into port. Blowing 
where it listeth, to some point of the com- 
pass the wind is kind. 

If one could find no other occupation, 
one might busy himself in making observa- 
tions of the weather. In the shifting vane 
and the restless clouds there is the attrac- 
tion of perpetual change, elements we may 
not control nor yet fully understand — an 
omnipresent and omnipotent force. Their 
wayward moods bring plenty or pestilence, 
as the vane chooses to veer or the tangles 
gather in the cirri's hair. All animal and 
vegetable life is dependent upon their inex- 



50 The Story of my House. 

orable decrees. The laws of the weather 
may not be altered. We may not increase 
the rainfall one inch or lower the tempera- 
ture half a degree. The most we can do is 
to study its warnings, and, by reading the 
signs of the earth and sky, be prepared for 
what changes may be in store. 

There is a relief from the tyranny of hard 
fact in endeavoring to trace the meaning of 
these nimbus clouds or the prophecy of this 
moisture-laden breeze. What will the next 
change be; of what complexion will be the 
weather to come ? I foretell it frequently 
through my walls of glass that enable me 
from within to read the horoscope of the 
sky. The signs exist, if we may but com- 
prehend them. They publish every event 
and indicate every change. Unvarying 
laws that may be understood by the intelli- 
gent observer control all atmospheric condi- 
tions, and particularly storms. By noting 
existing conditions the corollary is to be 
deduced. Blasius's laws, as stated in his 
volume, Storms, are comprehensive, and 
whoever will take the pains to study them 
(for many portions of the volume call for 
hard study) may learn to foretell much 
about the weather, at least so far as relates 
to larger storms. Many immediate changes 
are easy to foretell — from the moon's warn- 
ing halo and the prophesying cry of the 
hair-bird, to the toad's prescient croak from 



Signs in the Sky. 51 

the tree. From observation the farmer and 
mariner generally become weather-wise. 
Out in the open air continually, they learn 
to interpret the signs, their vocations being 
more or less controlled by and dependent 
upon the weather. A habit of studying the 
weather brings one into closer relationship 
with nature. However superficial the 
knowledge, one must know something of 
nature in order to be a weather-prophet, 
that is, so far as prophesying from numerous 
well-known natural signs is concerned. 

There are certain indices : the clouds no 
bigger than a man's hand, that indicate 
what is coming in a weather way for a 
short time ahead. Many of the old signs 
are reliable. From time out of mind a red 
sunset has been viewed as a precursor of 
fair weather, and a red sunrise the forerun- 
ner of storm. A bright-Yellow sky at sun- 
set uniformly denotes wind, a coppery or 
pale-yellow sunset, wet; and attentive ob- 
servers do not need the testimony of Ad- 
miral Fitzroy to know that a dark, gloomy, 
blue sky is windy, and a light, bright, blue 
sky is fair. A high dawn indicates wind, 
a low dawn fine weather. A gray sky in 
the morning presages fine weather. If 
cumulus gathers in the north and rises, 
rain may be looked for before night. Fre- 
quently the cumuli clouds — argosies serene- 
ly riding at anchor above the southern ho- 
4 



52 The Story of my House. 

rizon — flash forth warnings that are never 
fulfilled; the lightning of heat, and not of 
storm. If stripes are seen to rise northward 
from the southern sky, a change may be an- 
ticipated from their quarter. Without clouds 
there can be no storm. 

One of the most beautiful cloud-forma- 
tions, the mackerel-sky, is well known to 
be usually indicative of a change. Often- 
times .on the otherwise unclouded blue of 
the heavens delicate volutes or scrolls may 
be observed, like cobwebs spun upon the 
sky ; these frequently portend a decided 
change within two days. If this form of 
cloud, more familiarly known as mares'- 
tails, curls down toward sunset, fair weather 
may be looked for ; if up, it will most prob- 
ably rain before dawn. Frequently narrow 
bands or stripes extend from east to west or 
north to south over the entire aerial arch, 
the storm invariably coming from the direc- 
tion pointed out by the clouds. 

Local signs go to show that in winter a 
dark-blue cloud over the lake foretells a 
thaw; when the lower portion, however, 
is dark and the upper portion gray, snow 
may be expected. A halo round the moon 
is a sure indication of rain, snow, or wind, 
and the larger the circle the nearer the 
storm. When the stars are more than 
usually bright and numerous, or when the 
hills and distant objects seem unusually 



Signs in the Shy. 53 

sharp and near, I am certain of an approach- 
ing storm. "You all know the peculiar 
clearness which precedes rain," observes 
Ruskin, "when the distant hills are look- 
ing nigh. I take it on trust from the scien- 
tific people that there is then a quantity, 
almost to saturation, of aqueous vapor in 
the air, but it is aqueous vapor in a state 
which makes the air more transparent than 
it would be without it. What state of 
aqueous molecule is that, absolutely unre- 
flective of light — perfectly transmissive of 
light, and showing at once the color of blue 
water and blue air on the distant hills?" 
Distant sounds heard with unusual dis- 
tinctness apprise me of rain. The aurora 
borealis, when very bright, is usually fol- 
lowed by a storm, and often intense cold. 
The rainbow after drought is a rain sign. 

Natural signs, other than the handwrit- 
ing on the sky, are innumerable, and, again, 
the old sign-posts point out the way. Heavy 
dews indicate fair weather, while three con- 
secutive white frosts, and often two, invari- 
ably bring rain or snow. Before a snow- 
storm the weather usually moderates, while 
there is always an interval between the first 
drops and the downpour. If it rains before 
seven it will clear before eleven, is a wise 
saw. Certain stones, which, when rain is 
in the near future, become damp and dark- 
looking, are excellent barometers. We have 



54 The Story of my House. 

all of us noticed that fire frequently burns 
brighter and throws out more heat just be- 
fore a storm, and is hotter during its con- 
tinuance — an easterly storm, however, often 
being the exception. 

The closing of the blossoms of numer- 
ous flowers during the day tells me it will 
rain; my flowers also give out a stronger 
odor previous to rain. The trefoils contract 
their leaves at the approach of a storm. 
The convolvulus and the pimpernel also 
fold their petals previous to rain, the latter 
flower being appropriately named the poor 
man's weather-glass. When the chick- 
weed's blossom expands fully, no rain will 
occur for several hours ; if it continue open, 
no rain will fall during the day. When it 
half conceals its flower the day is usually 
showery. When it entirely closes its white 
petals, steady rain will occur. "It is mani- 
fest," observes Bacon in Sylva Sylvarum, 
"that there are some Flowers that have 
Respect to the Sunne in two kindes; The 
one by Opening and Shutting; And the 
other by Bowing and Inclining the Head; 
it is found in the great Flower of the Sunne ; 
in Marigolds, Wart-Wort, Mallow- Flowers; 
and others." 

Smoke rising straight in the air means 
fair weather. The odor of the Mephetis is 
very pronounced before rain, owing to the 
heaviness of the atmosphere, which pre- 



Signs in the Sky. 55 

vents odors from rising. Spiders do not 
spin their webs out of doors before rain. 
Previous to rain flies sting sharper, bees re- 
main in their hives, or fly but short dis- 
tances, and most animals and birds appear 
uneasy. " Sheep," the Selborne rector 
states, "are observed to be very intent on 
grazing against stormy wet evenings." One 
of the most reliable weather-signs in Texas 
is said to be supplied by the ant. The ants 
bring their eggs up out of their nests, ex- 
posing them to the sun to be hatched. 
When they are observed carrying them in 
again hastily, though there be not a cloud 
in the sky, a storm is near at hand. Swal- 
lows flying low near the ground or water 
is a rain-sign noted in the Georgics, the 
birds following the flies and gnats which 
delight in a warm strata of air. Aratus, the 
Greek poet, in the Prognostica, also cites 
the swallow's flight low over the water as 
a rain-sign : 

Fast skim the swallows o'er the lucid lake 
And with their breasts the rippling waters break. 

Previous to rain and just when it begins to 
rain, swallows fly swifter, doubtless to 
make the most of the insects while oppor- 
tunity affords. Wheeling and diving high 
in the sky, the swallow flies to tell me the 
day will be fair. Chickens, it may be no- 
ticed, when steady rain sets in will continue 



56 The Story of my House. 

searching for food after the rain has begun ; 
if only a shower they will seek shelter be- 
fore the rain begins. Foxes bark, and 
wolves howl more frequently when wet 
weather is approaching. Crows clamor 
louder before a change. Frogs, geese, 
and crows were looked upon as weather- 
prophets by the ancients, the crow especially 
figuring frequently as a foreboder of storm. 
According to Virgil, if they croak often, and 
with a hoarse voice it is a rain-sign : 

Turn cornix rauca pluviam vocat improba voce. 

If they croak only three or four times, and 
with a shrill clear voice it is a fair weather 
sign : 

Turn liquidas corvi presso ter guttere voces 
Aut quater ingeminant. 

Lucretius likewise introduces the crow as a 
weather prophet : 

.... om'nous crows with various noise, 
Affright the farmers ; and fill all the plain, 
Now calling for rough winds and now for rain.* 

The crow's raucous voice also figures in 
Aratus's Prognostics of a Storm : 

The aged crow on sable pinions borne, 
Upon the beetling promontory stands, 
And tells the advancing storm to trembling lands ; 
Or dips and dives within the river's tide, 
Or, croaking hoarse, wheels round in circles dark and 
wide, f 

* Creeche's translation. f Milman's translation. 



Signs in the Sky. 



And Chaucer, while following the majority 
of the poets in aspersing the crow, still 
makes him serve as a barometer : 

Ne nevir aftir swete noise shall ye make, 
But evir crye ayenst tempest and rain. . . . 

All nature reads the coming signs. The 
migratory woodcock will desert the fall 
covers in advance of the storm, even though 
the weather promise fair. Just before a 
storm, like its echo in advance, I have heard 
the Canadian forest resounding on every 
side with the cry of the great horned owl — 
oh-hoo, oh-hoo ! oh-hoo, oh-hoor-r-r-r ! 
Wild fowl are conscious of the change from 
afar. Even the domestic goose and duck 
are unusually garrulous previous to a storm, 
voicing their pleasure at the prospect of 
approaching rain. I recall a case in point 
while trout-fishing, where geese proved 
excellent weather-prophets. The day in 
question, September 14, 1875, the ^ ast day 
of the open season in Ontario, like the three 
or four preceding days, was warm, hazy, 
and delightful, with no perceptible omens 
to denote an approaching storm, save the 
graceful mares'-tails waving from the sky. 
But a large flock of geese, which appeared 
to dispute with the trout the possession of 
the pond, and which had frequently proved 
a source of annoyance while angling, were 
more than usually excited, screaming con- 



58 The Story of my House. 

tinually, and flying to and from the pond 
with loud gaggling. The sun descended 
behind the tamaracks with an angry frown, 
the moon became obscured by ominous 
clouds, the temperature fell suddenly, and a 
severe equinoctial storm set in. 

Birds, however, can not be implicitly 
relied upon as weather-prophets, espe- 
cially as harbingers of spring. Year after 
year, tempted by instinct and the tempered 
air, do the migratory birds take early flights 
to the northward. Suddenly on some geni- 
al morning, the vanguards appear. A blue- 
bird's, or song-sparrow's dulcet warble falls 
upon the ear, and we welcome the return 
of spring. But season after season we have 
to record the disappearance of the birds 
again, and the recurrence of stormy weath- 
er. Lured by the soft spring sunshine, and 
eager to revisit their northern homes, the 
birds, like human migrants to the south, 
frequently return too soon. Not until I 
hear the first sweet song of the white- 
throated sparrow am I convinced that spring 
has come to stay. 

How far the weather is influenced by 
the changes of the moon is a disputed ques- 
tion. M. de Parville, a French meteorolo- 
gist of note, has recently claimed that a 
long series of observations show that the 
moon which passes every month from one 
hemisphere to the other, influences the 



Signs in the Shy. 59 

direction of the atmospheric currents ; that 
the distance of the moon from the equator, 
or inclination of the moon's path to the 
plane of the equator varies every year, pass- 
ing from a maximum to a minimum limit, 
and that the meteorological character of a 
series of years appears to be mainly depend- 
ent upon the change of inclination when 
those extreme limits have been touched : 
the rainy years, the cold winters, and hot 
summers return periodically and coincide 
with certain declinations of the moon. In 
proof of his assertion, he presents a table 
tracing backward this connection between 
the rainy years and the moon's declination. 
In the European Magazine, vol. 60, p. 
24, a table is given which has been ascribed 
to the astronomer Herschel. It is con- 
structed upon a philosophical consideration 
of the attraction of the sun and moon in 
their several positions respecting the earth, 
suggesting to the observer what kind of 
weather will most probably follow the 
moon's entrance into any of her quarters. 
Briefly summarized, the "nearer the time of 
the moon's entrance, at full and change or 
quarters, is to midnight (that is within two 
hours before and after midnight), the more 
fair the weather is in summer, but the nearer 
to noon, the less fair. Also, the moon's 
entrance, at full, change, and quarters, dur- 
ing six of the afternoon hours, viz. : from 



60 The Story of my House. 

four to ten, may be followed by fair weath- 
er ; but this is mostly dependent on the 
wind. The same entrance during all the 
hours after midnight, except the two first, 
is unfavorable to fair weather. 

It may be of interest to cite Bacon's 
rules for prognosticating the weather, from 
the appearances of the moon : 

i. If the new moon does not appear till 
the fourth day, it prognosticates a troubled 
air for the whole month. 

2. If the moon either at her first appear- 
ance or within a few days after, has her 
lower horn obscured and dusky, it denotes 
foul weather before the full ; but, if she be 
discovered about the middle, storms are to 
be expected about the full ; and, if her upper 
horn be affected, about the wane. 

}. When on her fourth day the moon 
appears pure and spotless, her horns un- 
blunted and neither flat nor quite erect, but 
between both, it promises fair weather for 
the greatest part of the month. 

4. An erect moon is generally threaten- 
ing and unfavorable, but particularly de- 
notes wind ; though if she appears with 
short and blunted horns, rain is rather to be 
expected. 

The influence of the moon on the 
weather was one of the cardinal beliefs, not 
only of the ancients, but of our forefathers, 
and the old gardeners and orchardists be- 



Signs in the Sky. 



lieved implicitly in its effect on most opera- 
tions connected with husbandry, regulating 
these operations with the greatest exacti- 
tude, according to the various phases of the 
planet. Harvard, in his treatise on the art 
of propogating plants, referring to the prop- 
er time for grafting, declares, "the grafts 
must alwaies be gathered in the old of the 
Moone." Lawson, in his New Orchard 
and Garden, advises as the best time to re- 
move sets, "immediately after the fall of 
the Leaf, in or about the change of the 
Moon ;" and the best time for "graffing" 
as "in the last part of February or March, 
or beginning with April, when the Sun 
with his heat begins to make the sap stir 
more rankly about the change of the Moon, 
before you see any great apparancie of leaf 
or flowers ; but only knots and buds, and 
before they be proud, though it be sooner." 
Very frequent references to the moon's 
influence with respect to forestry and its 
operations occur in Evelyn's Sylva. In 
felling timber, he charges the forester to 
"observe the Moons increase" (chap, iii, 
13). And again, "the fittest time of the 
Moon for the Pruning is (as of Grafflng) 
when the sap is ready to stir (not proudly 
stirring) and so to cover the wound " (chap, 
xxix, 6.) The old lunar rules for felling 
trees are thus given by Evelyn (chap, xxx, 
26) : "Fell in the decrease, or four days 



62 The Story of my House. 

after conjunction of the two great Lumi- 
naries ; some of the last quarter of it ; or (as 
Pliny) in the very article of the change, if 
possible ; which hapning (saith he) in the 
last day of the Winter Solstice, that Timber 
will prove immortal : At least should it be 
from the twentieth to the thirtieth day, ac- 
cording to Columella : Cato four dayes 
after the Full, as far better for the growth : 
But all viminious Trees silente Lund ; such 
as Sallies, Birch, Poplar, etc. Vegetius 
for ship timber, from the fifteenth to the 
twenty -fifth, the Moon as before ; but never 
during the Increase, Trees being then most 
abounding with moisture, which is the 
only source of putrefaction : And yet 'tis 
affirm'd upon unquestionable Experience, 
that Timber cut at any season of the year, 
in the Old Moon, or last Quarter, when 
the Wind blows Westerly ; proves as 
sound, and good as at any other period 
whatsoever ; nay, all the whole Summer 
long, as in any Month of the Year." 

Few of our large storms are of local ori- 
gin ; they are hatched for the most part on 
the plains east of the Rocky Mountains, and 
thence move eastward, deflecting slightly 
to the north during winter. In Europe, the 
meteorologists assert, storms are more 
nearly round than in America, where they 
are of a more irregular oval form, varying 
in size from the diameter of a few miles to 



Signs in the Sky. 



those that surge from the gulf to beyond 
the lakes. 

But Blasius for storms ! the supreme 
authority, the Aristotle of the clouds and 
air-currents. When all our ordinary signs 
fail, we have only to turn to the Hanover 
professor to read and learn. 

Unquestionably, nevertheless, the most 
infallible of weather rules is that there is no 
rule. So far as ordinary signs go, there is 
nothing more true than that all signs may 
fail during a protracted drought, or con- 
tinuous rainy weather. Vainly then the 
peacock screams, or the sun emerges from 
a dripping sky. At best the weather is a 
hoiden, and, perhaps, loves a frown better 
than a dimple. The rain may come and 
the rain may go, persistently following the 
course of a lake or river, favoring this local- 
ity and slighting that; deluging one county 
to leave the adjoining one parched with 
thirst. For it is true of the weather and 
other things besides; it never smiles but 
it laughs, it never rains but it pours. 



IV. 



THE IDEAL HAVEN. 

When my ship comes home I shall have a study of a 
very superior kind built. A part of the scheme will be 
a garden and a greenhouse which shall be especially 
adapted to the exigencies of authorcraft. — J. Ashby- 
Sterry, Cucumber Chronicles. 




Jhile silence is pre-eminently gold- 
en in the study, the study, nev- 
ertheless, should be more than 
"a chamber deaf to noise." 
Situated away from disturbing 
household sounds, it should also be with- 
drawn from ready access on the part of all 
intruders. It should be a " den " in the lit- 
eral sense of the word — a covert, a haven. 
Not that it should necessarily be below 
ground, but the way leading to it should be 
difficult to find; and, like the fox's den, it 
should be provided with two entrances or 
means of escape, the more readily to baffle 
pursuers. 

In how many houses, even those which 
are supposed to have been most carefully 
planned, are not the library and the study 



The Ideal Haven. 65 

placed in close proximity to the front en- 
trance, where anything like continuous re- 
pose is as far removed as the constellation 
Orion, and where the volume with which 
one endeavors to be engaged is forever 
chafed by the friction of passing inmates ! 
Apart from mere noise, the discomfort of 
a library or study so situated is always great 
from the facility it offers to the wiles of 
innumerable outside forces. It is necessa- 
rily unpleasant to have certain visitors thrust 
unceremoniously upon one. You can not 
tell by tl e mere ring of the bell whether it 
is A, B, or C who has come to honor you 
with his presence — to bore or to charm; 
and without at every announcement mak- 
ing a sudden dive at the risk of being seen 
or heard, you are liable to be chambered for 
an hour with the very person you may most 
desire to avoid. Thoreau often waited for 
the Visitor who never comes ; many of us 
must wait for the visitor who never goes. 

Not that I would limit visitors to a cir- 
cumscribed few, or banish welcome ones at 
an early hour. I entertain the highest re- 
gard for the maxim of Pope respecting the 
coming and the parting guest; yet, in the 
very nature of things, there are always some 
to whom one would fain send the conven- 
tional message, "not at home." It was 
to obviate such monstrous misplacements 
as a library near the front door (a library 



66 The Story of my House. 

merely in name), that Naude, years since, 
in his Advis pour dresser une Bibliotheque, 
gave this excellent advice: " Let the library 
be placed in a portion of the house most re- 
moved from noise and disturbance, not only 
from without, but also from family and 
servants ; away from the street, the kitchen, 
sitting-room, and similar places ; locating 
it, if possible, between some spacious court 
and a fine garden where it may have abun- 
dant light, pure air, and extended and agree- 
able views." 

In the case of all houses where rooms 
are thus misplaced, some means of spiriting 
one's self away through a side or rear door 
are absolutely essential to even a semblance 
of comfort. A study amid such surround- 
ings, without safe and instantaneous means 
of flight from unwelcome callers is a gro- 
tesque misnomer. Is not a man's house his 
castle? The term "growlery," often ap- 
plied to the study, undoubtedly arose from 
an apartment so situated, referring not to a 
cage where the master of the house may 
work off his surly moods, as some ladies 
erroneously suppose, but to the anathemas 
bestowed by its harassed inmate upon the 
architect who planned a place for retirement 
where retirement is only possible after mid- 
night. All these can the more readily com- 
prehend the force of a passage in Walden — 
"the mass of men lead lives of quiet des- 



The Ideal Haven. 67 

peration ; what is called resignation is con- 
firmed desperation." A trap -door, con- 
cealed by an Oriental rug, that would re- 
spond to a certain pressure of the foot known 
only to the initiated, might be worthy of 
consideration by house-builders in this con- 
nection. Or some kind of reflecting-glass 
might be devised that would enable coming 
events of an unpleasant nature to cast their 
shadows before. 

Even though one meet his modest ac- 
counts with all reasonable promptitude, 
there are still creditors oblivious to the 
amenities of life, who, instead of forward- 
ing annual or semi - annual statements 
through the certain channel of the mails, 
send their " cards of compliment" for col- 
lection through the medium of middlemen 
or runners, who, even yet more callous to 
the finer feelings of humanity, and intent 
solely upon pouching their guerdon, invari- 
ably present themselves at the front door to 
force a passage within. Fancy an intrusion 
of this kind while you may be rereading 
The Eve of St. Agnes, or perusing The 
Good-Natured Man ! Though it occur 
but once a year, the shock must still re- 
main. At one time or another this form of 
visitant is bound to appear to every one; 
for the species of fiend exists in common 
with front-door book-agents, itinerant vend- 
ers, census-takers, expressmen, telegraph- 
5 



68 The Story of my House. 

messengers, and the rest of the customary 
mob that charges upon one's front entrance 
wherever and whenever it is the most ac- 
cessible means of invasion. Even the par- 
cels'-delivery, despite reiterated warnings, 
will not unfrequently persist in demanding 
ingress through the forbidden portal. In- 
deed, the front door is a constant factor of 
discord, the baiting-place of disquiet, the 
arch enemy of household peace. 

Many of the vexations that are ever striv- 
ing to wedge their way through the vesti- 
bule may be avoided by intelligent, well- 
drilled servants who are capable of reading 
human nature, and at a glance can distin- 
guish the false from the true. A thoroughly 
competent house-maid should wear her cap 
internally as well as externally, and, like a 
thrasher's sieve, be able to winnow the 
chaff from the wheat. But such discrimi- 
nating Cerberi are as rare as they are desir- 
able, and the melancholy fact exists that the 
servant is invariably ready to leave so soon 
as she or he has become really valuable or 
thoroughly accustomed to your ways. 

Lamb, in one of his essays on Popular 
Fallacies, has said some excellent things 
about visitors. If certain visitors would 
only read these things, and, reading, com- 
prehend! And if the visitor who never 
knows when to leave, as distinguished from 
those who, staying late, always leave too 



The Ideal Haven. 69 

soon, would only peruse and ponder! In 
his category of intruders Lamb emphasizes 
"purposeless visitants and droppers-in, " 
and he sometimes wonders from what sky 
they fall. Whittier's Demon of the Study, 
too, would indicate that the type still flour- 
ishes in New as well as Old England. Un- 
der the inspiration of an architect who is yet 
to be born, the house of the millennium will 
be able to avoid all unpleasant intrusions 
upon a privacy that is its inherent right, but 
which, alas ! exists not in the home of the 
present. 

It is apparent at once that the ideal ha- 
ven can not hide itself amid the turmoil of 
the first floor. To fulfill its mission it must 
betake itself to surroundings more retired, 
and soar to a serener sphere. The true 
place for the study, therefore, is on an upper 
floor, and in the ideal house I would have it 
a spacious oriel approached by a hidden 
staircase. 

Hawthorne's idea was an excellent one 
— the study in the tower or upper story of 
his residence at Concord, which he ap- 
proached by a ladder and trap-door, pull- 
ing the ladder up after him, and placing a 
weight over the door for additional security. 
Here he could look out upon his favorite 
walk amid the evergreens, almost touch the 
crowns of the leafy elms, and bathe in the 
sunshine that illumined the fertile plain 



70 The Story of my House, 

across the roadway. His first residence at 
Concord — the Old Manse — was sufficiently 
remote to dispense with a trap-door (un- 
less, indeed, this was an after-consideration 
owing to family reasons), at an opposite 
extremity of the village, far removed from 
Emerson and even the fleet feet of Thoreau, 
situated at a distance from the highway, 
the house itself of a gray neutral tone to 
baffle observation, and half concealed amid 
the shade of the distant suburbs, he was 
here free from all external annoyances. 
Here in the retired three-windowed study 
in the rear of the house, which overlooked 
the romantic Concord River below, he 
could set about his chosen task with no 
dread of interruption from the outside 
world. 

Montaigne's was a model study, a true 
sanctum. Without the quiet and reclusion 
it afforded, the pervading charm of the Es- 
says would never have been ours. Instead 
of sauntering and loitering along with the 
easy abandon they do, they would have 
hurried and galloped by at breakneck speed, 
striding the noisy highway rather than pa- 
cing the shady lane. The placid, thinking, 
receptive mind of Montaigne was obviously 
the direct outcome of the calm and tran- 
quillity exhaled by the inaccessible round 
Tower of Perigord. 

The enchanting landscape, too, that 



The Ideal Haven. 71 

smiled through the spacious windows was, 
no doubt, a constant inspiration, serving to 
rest the eye and mind when they were 
wearied by the tyranny of print, or fatigued 
by protracted writing. There would doubt- 
less be more Montaignes were it possible to 
reproduce the life and surroundings amid 
which the Essays were inspired. Genius 
is capable of much ; but, to be at its best, 
even genius must be in the mood, and moods 
are largely the result of surroundings. "No 
doubt," observes Lord Lytton, "the cradle 
and nursery of definite thought is in the 
hazy limbo of Reverie. There ideas float 
before us, rapid, magical, vague, half 
formed ; apparitions of the thoughts that 
are to be born later into the light, and run 
their course in the world of man." 

" Like the rain of night," remarks Hen- 
ri Amiel in the Journal Intime, "reverie re- 
stores color and force to thoughts which 
have been blanched and wearied by the 
heat of the day." 

The true flavor of a fine vintage may 
not be savored if the wine be roiled, or 
served at an improper temperature ; the 
fine effluence that should emanate from the 
study — the framing of one's mood and the 
molding of one's thoughts, is only to be 
obtained in its perfect measure when the 
mind is freed from all disturbing influences. 

Let us mount the classic staircase with 



72 The Story of my House. 

Montaigne, and view the apartment so 
minutely described in the third chapter of 
the Third Book. The well-filled book- 
cases, the sunlight, the seclusion, the invit- 
ing prospect, the fireplace, and the immu- 
nity from noise, all are there : 

"At home I betake me somewhat 
the oftener to my library, whence all at 
once I command and survey all my house- 
hold ; it is seated in the chiefe entrie of my 
house, thence I behold under me my gar- 
den, my base court, my yard, and looke 
even into most roomes of my house. There 
without order, without method, and by 
peece-meales I turn over and ransacke, 
now one booke and now another. Some- 
times I muse and rave ; and walking up 
and downe I endight and enregister these 
my humours, these my conceits. It is 
placed on the third storie of a tower. The 
lowermost is my, Chapell ; the second a 
chamber with other lodgings, where I often 
lie because I would be alone. Above it is a 
great wardrobe. It was in times past the 
most unprofitable place of all my house. 
There I past the greatest part of my lives 
dayes, and weare out most houres of the 
day. I am never there a nights : Next 
unto it is a handsome neat cabinet, able 
and large enough to receive fire in winter, 
and very pleasantly windowen. And if I 
feared not care, more than cost ; (care 



The Ideal Haven. 73 

which drives and diverts me from all busi- 
nesse) I might easily joyne a convenient 
gallerie of a hundred paces long, and twelve 
broad, on each side of it, and upon one 
floore ; having already for some other pur- 
pose, found all the walles raised unto a 
convenient height. Each retired place re- 
quireth a walke. My thoughts are prone 
to sleepe, if I sit long. My minde goes not 
alone as if ledges did moove it. Those 
that studie without bookes, are all in the 
same case. The forme of it is round, and 
hath no flat side, but what serveth for my 
table and my chaire : In which bending or 
circling manner, at one looke it offreth me 
the full sight of all my books, set round 
about upon shelves or desks, five rancks one 
upon another. It hath three bay-windowes, 
of a farre-extending, rich and unresisted 
prospect, and is in diameter sixteen paces 
wide. In winter I am less continually 
there : for my house (as the name of it im- 
porteth) is pearched upon an overpearing 
hillocke ; and hath no part more subject to 
all wethers than this : which pleaseth me 
the more, both because the accesse unto it 
is somewhat troublesome and remote, and 
for the benefit of the exercise which is to be 
respected ; and that I may the better seclude 
myselfe from companie, and keepe incroach- 
ers from me : There is my seat, that is my 
throne. I endeavour to make my rule 



74 The Story of my House. 

therein absolute, and to sequester that only- 
corner from the communitie of wife, of chil- 
dren, and of acquaintance. Else-where 
I have but a verball authoritie, of confused 
essence. Miserable in my minde is he, 
who in his owne home, hath no where 
to be to himselfe ; where hee may par- 
ticularly court, and at his pleasure hide or 
with-draw himself. Ambition paieth her 
followers well, to keepe them still in open 
view, as a statue in some conspicuous 
place."* 

Aside from the quiet, sequestration, and 
conveniences of the philosopher's study, it 
will be observed that among its many de- 
sirable features was that of its being " very 
pleasantly windowen " (tres-plaisamment 
perce), the windows commanding a "farre- 
extending, rich, and unresisted prospect" 
(trots veues de riche et libre prospect). 
Assuredly the sunshine and light that 
warmed and brightened the apartment, and 
the unlimited view of hill and plain, were a 
stimulus to the writer. 

Fortunate is he who has a pleasing pros- 
pect to look in upon him — it invigorates 
and cheers like a cordial. Whatever the 
time of year, the distant hills, visible through 
my windows, are a source of companion- 
ship and charm. So constantly are they 

* Florio's translation. 



The Ideal Haven. 75 

before me, I have begun to consider them 
as my own, a remote part of the garden and 
the grounds to which they form the frame. 
I love to watch their changing expression 
and note their play of light and shade. 
Meseems they almost resemble a human 
countenance in the varying sentiments they 
convey. Content and malcontent are as 
plainly expressed by their mobile curves as 
they are by the lines of the human face. 
Like the rest of us, in sunshine they smile, 
in storm they frown. They are warm, or 
cool, as the mood takes them ; as they re- 
flect or absorb the sky and atmosphere. 
For days they rest in absolute calm ; again 
they recede, and, again, they advance. 
Mirroring every change of the day and of 
the passing seasons, they are a dial that 
tells the hour, the time of year to me. The 
sun salutes one side of their profile the first 
thing in the morning ; his parting rays 
illumine the other side the last thing in the 
evening. They hasten the dawn, and pro- 
long the twilight. The full moon rising 
from the far horizon behind them, silvers 
their wooded slopes ere it gilds the topmost 
gables of my house. They catch the first 
drops of the summer shower, and receive 
the first flakes of the November snow. 
The loveliest blues and purples seek them, 
drawing a semi-transparent veil over them. 
On hot summer noontides the cloud- 



76 The Story of my House. 

flocks repose upon them, and the orange 
afterglow lingers long upon their tran- 
quil heights. In spring the earliest vio- 
lets carpet their sheltered places ; in au- 
tumn they yield me the last blue gentian 
bloom. I see the wind lifting their green 
skirts, and fancy I hear his voice murmur- 
ing through their umbrageous depths. My 
hills ever catch and focus color, and toy and 
play with wind and sun. Whether shim- 
mering in midsummer glare, or standing 
out against the wintry sky, or slumbering 
in the haze of the dreamy autumnal day, 
they are my finest landscape paintings. 
When the snow has spread its shroud over 
the silent fields they still speak to me in 
color — gray, bronze, and purple — by turns 
during the day ; a kaleidoscope of tones 
when the sun sinks behind their serried 
ranks of trees. 

Seeing them thus year after year they 
have come to possess a personality ; and 
when a rarefied atmosphere brings them 
unusually near, I find myself casting an 
ima'ginary lasso at them to bring them still 
closer to me that I may stroke their lovely 
contours. So familiar have I become with 
them, I have only to look out of my win- 
dows, and I am treading their luminous 
heights, and am fanned by the breeze that 
perpetually blows upon their peaceful 
crests. 



The Ideal Haven. 77 

With the wind from the southeast, I hear 
the roar of the railroad trains, panting and 
steaming, coming and going along their 
slopes, leaving a trail of smoke to mark the 
passage of their flight. The ceaseless tide 
of travel ever hurries on. How many of 
those seated in the luxurious coaches note 
the beauty of my hills ? Cloud-shadows 
chase each other, and hawks wheel over 
their summits, while the train speeds on, 
intent upon overtaking other hills and its 
remote destination : the beauty of my hills 
remains for me. 

A knock at my study-door interrupts 
my musings, and my hills abruptly recede. 
Not that my friend Sherlock drives them 
away ; he is so versatile and colorful him- 
self that the charm of his presence and con- 
versation takes the place of my hills. I 
never learned until to-day why he has re- 
mained a bachelor. It was only when con- 
versing about the ideal home that the true 
reason occurred to me — he has failed, not in 
discovering the ideal woman, but the ideal 
architect to carry out his admirable concep- 
tions of the perfect house ; and rather than 
fall below his artistic standard he passively 
submits to fate, and awaits the architect 
who is to be. 

"You seem to overlook the probability 
of my being referred to a committee inqui- 
rendo lunatico, should my views ever be 



7& The Story of my House. 

carried out ; and it seems dangerous to 
commit them to print," was my friend's 
rejoinder to a request that he present his 
views in detail. 

" But the simple story of my house will 
at most be read by a few," I replied ; " and 
these few will charitably give us credit for 
good intentions ; moreover the critics are 
not nearly as black as they are painted. " 

" My ideas," continued my friend, " fly 
so rudely in the face of all convention that 
people would consider the order of Nature 
reversed. ' A kitchen in the front yard ! ' 
I hear them say, ' Away with him ! ' 

" Nevertheless, had I the courage of my 
convictions, together with ten times as 
much money as I shall ever possess, I 
would build my house all front, and no 
rear ! 

"A capacious vestibule, say 20X20 
feet, should be, not the entrance exactly, 
but a means of exclusion for unwelcome 
visitors. A door on one side should open 
to my lady's reception-room where she 
should receive all formal and business calls ; 
in short, every one whom she took no pleas- 
ure in seeing at all. 

"This reception-room should be con- 
nected with the domestic end of the house ; 
the store-rooms, servants' hall, kitchen, 
kitchen-pantries, and, back of these, the 
dining- and breakfast-rooms. 



The Ideal Haven. 79 

" On the opposite side of the vestibule 
should be a door, similarly accommodating 
all unwelcome guests of the master, being 
the entrance to the office, and connected by 
a heavy portiere and door with the den 
and library. From these masculine apart- 
ments a staircase, concealed in the wall, 
should enable the good man of the house to 
disappear to his bath- and dressing-room ; 
and there should also be an outer side-door 
from the den, through which could be 
* fired ' (and admitted also) such tardy and 
bibulous friends as might meet the disap- 
proval of madame. 

" The back of the vestibule should open 
and expand into the hall — a great living- 
room connecting the library at one end 
with the dining-room at the other, and out 
of which should open such little parlors and 
snuggeries as inventive genius might sug- 
gest. 

" Into this hall, the real house, only 
those one wished to see should be admitted. 
Here the great staircase should rest the eye, 
and the great hearth should blaze. On oc- 
casions of festivity the guests, in their 
wraps, should ascend by a modest staircase 
in the vestibule to their disrobing rooms, 
and thence descend by the grand staircase. 

" The kitchen being at one end of the 
front part of the house, and so conveniently 
accessible to the butcher, baker, and can- 



80 The Story of my House. 

dlestick-maker, would leave all the space 
behind the house for piazzas, terraces, and 
gardens, with such fountains, statuary, and 
conservatories as might be within reach of 
the goodman's purse; and all where the re- 
porter and unwelcome caller could not in- 
trude; for they would be secluded alike 
from the general public and the ordinary 
domestic offices. The principal apartments 
of all Japanese houses, I may observe, are 
at the back of the house, looking out upon 
the garden with its lilies, irises, paeonias, 
azaleas, its foliage-plants and flowering 
shrubs. 

"Thus you perceive my ideal house 
requires four staircases: the great one in 
the great hall, the modest one in the vesti- 
bule, the secret one (to escape creditors), 
and the one for the servants. 

" When I consider that this is only two 
more than all civilized houses have, I am 
surprised at the moderation and restraint of 
the average house-builder. But pray re- 
member I am anxious to avoid that com- 
mittee of lunacy ; and I have not yet begun 
to build." 

Personally, I entertain the highest regard 
for my versatile friend's ideal. Were I to 
suggest any change in the main points, so 
admirably conceived, it would be to have 
the study removed to a still serener sphere, 
as has already been suggested. Even with 



The Ideal Haven. 



my friend's excellent barricade, still, on 
some occasion when least expected — per- 
chance a most momentous one, just as a 
long-lost conceit had winged its return — the 
dreaded intruder might force an entrance, 
and put the thought to instantaneous and 
irremeable flight. 

The size of the study, methinks, should 
be small rather than large ; yet ample enough 
to harbor the cheering grate-fire, the easy- 
chairs, the center-table, the writing-desk, 
the well-filled book-cases, and the artistic 
glass cabinet or cabinets, for such precious 
works as should be kept under lock an4 
key and never loaned, or even touched by 
sacrilegious hands. 

Let these gems be worthily set as be- 
comes their quality and rarity, so they may 
minister to the delight of the eye and the 
pleasure of the touch as they contribute to 
the delectation of the mind. "Sashes of 
gold for old saints, golden bindings for old 
writings," Nodier expresses it; and Charles 
Asselineau affectionately exclaims: "My 
Books, I love them ! I have sought them, 
gathered them, searched for them; I have 
had them habited to the best of my ability 
by the best tailors of books." My glass 
cabinet is my casket, my jewel-case; and 
in the many-colored morocco of the bind- 
ings that reflect the precious riches con- 
tained within them, I see all manner of jew- 



82 The Story of my House. 



els flash and glow. In these, and in some 
of the superb marblings employed in the 
finer French bindings — and here the exqui- 
site beauty of the perfect half-morocco bind- 
ing is apparent — I derive a satisfaction akin 
to that I receive from the contemplation of 
any fine art object. The airy conceits and 
felicities of phrase of a favorite author be- 
come yet more entrancing when held by 
these colored butterfly- wings and variega- 
ted plumes dreamed out by the artist, and 
stamped in permanent form by the skill of 
the binder. 

Thought is inclined to wander amid the 
freedom of a large room. But though the 
study should not be a vast apartment, it 
should be sufficiently spacious for comfort 
and to avoid overcrowding. Sufficiently 
large it should also be and the ceiling suffi- 
ciently high to insure a pure atmosphere. 
On account of ventilation, a fire-place is of 
great advantage in the room where one is 
engaged in sedentary pursuits. It is the 
next thing to the walk and the elixir of the 
open air. De Quincey worked in a room 
seventeen by twelve, and not more than 
seven and a half feet high. The low ceil- 
ings must have oppressed him; and the 
vitiated air and sense of suffocation, it is 
not unlikely, led him to yield to the danger- 
ous stimulus that inspired the Confessions. 

Most wisely has Leigh Hunt discoursed 



The Ideal Haven. 83 

upon the study and its surroundings in that 
ever-pleasing essay, My Books. " I do not 
like this fine large study. I like elegance. 
I like room to breathe in, and even walk 
about, when I want to breathe and walk 
about. I like a great library next my study ; 
but for the study itself give me a small, 
snug place, almost entirely walled with 
books. There should be only one window 
in it looking on trees. ... I dislike a grand 
library to study in. I mean an immense 
apartment with books all in museum order, 
especially wire-safed. I say nothing against 
the museum itself, or public libraries. . . . 
A grand private library, which the master 
of the house also makes his study, never 
looks to me like a real place of books, much 
less of authorship. I can not take kindly to 
it. It is certainly not out of envy ; for three 
parts of the books are generally trash, and I 
can seldom think of the rest and the pro- 
prietor together. " 

To be attractive and cozy, the study 
need not be extravagantly furnished. As 
in other apartments of the house, light is 
one of its first requisites ; with color, ease, 
quiet, and, if possible, a pleasant prospect. 
In the study, above all, no discordant ele- 
ments should intrude. The general tone 
of the walls, decorations, and furnishings, 
while rich, should yet be subdued and rest- 
ful. A glaring placque, a staring figure in 
6 



The Story of my House. 



the wall or carpet pattern, or any subject 
unpleasing in its nature or sentiment, 
whether in paintings, pictures, or orna- 
ments, has no place in an apartment 
which, by its very atmosphere, should con- 
duce to reverie and a contemplative frame 
of mind. Let dreamful landscapes, rather 
than figures in action, adorn and comple- 
ment the rich slate or sage of its walls and 
hangings ; and I picture my ideal study, 
when my second ship comes in, hung round 
about solely with Daubigny's tender twi- 
lights and peaceful river-reaches on his calm 
and slowly gliding Oise. 

For the closer concentration of thought, 
the working-chair would be placed in the 
most attractive corner of the apartment, 
back of the spacious writing-desk, with its 
amplitude of drawers and pigeon - holes ; 
its topmost shelf and other convenient 
places so arranged with pictures and por- 
traits of favorite authors and dear or absent 
friends as to create and constantly diffuse 
an atmosphere of congenial companionship. 

A carved book-rest should hold the dic- 
tionary in place close to the working-chair, 
and a revolving case within arm's reach 
should bring to it desired works of refer- 
ence and such especially treasured volumes 
from which ideas may be collected — an- 
other name for inspiration. I would men- 
tion some of these — each worthy of crushed 






The Ideal Haven. 85 

levant covers, the handicraft of a Padeloup 
or Payne — but for the fact that every one 
should choose such inspirations for himself. 
One may not be guided by another's choice 
in a face or book that charms. 

Once during the day, but always unper- 
ceived, save for an added freshness pervad- 
ing the apartment, my study should respond 
to the touch of gentle fingers. Then, as I 
mount the secret staircase when I would 
be alone — a lingering aroma of violets and 
the vanishing rustle of a silken robe. 




V. 



WHEN LEAVES GROW SERE. 

For we, which now behold these present days, 
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise. 

Sonnet cvi. 

Not all the joy, and not all the glory, 
Must fade as leaves when the woods wax hoary. 

Swinburne. 

here is a sigh in the passing 
breeze as the autumn days steal 
on — a sigh for the summer fled. 
I hear the change, the admoni- 
tory whisper of the leaves, al- 
most ere the transition becomes perceptible, 
for Nature as yet has scarcely altered her 
outward garb. 

Yet daily the shadows lengthen, the haze 
deepens, mellower grow the evening skies, 
until, no longer vacillating between summer 
and autumn, the first frost smites the low- 
lands, and the division line of the seasons is 
visibly proclaimed. 

" We hope in the spring, only to regret 
in the fall." But shall I regret the vanished 




When Leaves Grow Sere. 87 

summer? Will not yonder hillside glow 
as all the summer meadows have never 
glowed? these yellowing woods outshine 
the sunshine of spring ? Suddenly, through 
my windows, I note where the first fires 
have begun to burn. I watch the flames 
creep stealthily along the hills, smoldering, 
perchance, in a distant hollow, anon riding 
the higher crests, illuming sumac-senti- 
neled ravines, invading the brier patches, 
and lighting sproutland and swamp with 
living fire. High on the uplands the splen- 
dor hangs, low in the valleys the glory falls. 
Steeped and flooded with its color, the land- 
scape gleams like an opal beneath the au- 
tumn sun. What poet, what prose painter, 
what cunning artificer of phrase can depict 
the tidal wave of beauty of the latter year ? 
Shall I regret the summer with the Oc- 
tober carnival at hand, when the wood- 
cock whistles from the alder thicket and 
the grouse bursts through the painted cov- 
ert ? It is for this the sportsman has longed 
and waited during the lingering months of 
summer. Stanchly as he is drawn upon 
the covey, I am sure The Spanish Pointer, 
in the old print above the writing-desk, feels 
the advent of the season, and thinks, with 
the latter-day philosopher, that "the preach- 
er who declared that all is vanity, never 
looked at a fall woodcock over the rib of a 
good gun." 



The Story of my House. 



Always on his point on the knoll, the 
pointer's riveted attitude now has an added 
meaning. His eye still fixed upon the 
quarry, he nevertheless moves unceasingly 
in his frame. There is no deception, no 
optical illusion; he moves — not forward or 
backward, but with an oscillating, sideward 
motion, as if the constant strain on his 
powerful tendons had caused them to relax. 
Rigid as a statue has he stood throughout 
the summer, the blue blood of generations 
of pointers holding him unflinchingly upon 
the game. Perhaps now the scent has 
grown cold. Or has he wearied of waiting 
for the volley of the barrels, and, looking 
up for a moment at the crimsoning copse, 
bethought him that a fresh season has 
dawned, and there are fresh coveys to 
spring? The grim lion by Barye, in the 
etching that hangs above him, remains mo- 
tionless. Though you would dread to meet 
the beast of prey on the desert where he is 
stalking, he shows no signs of animation, 
on the wall whence he looks down upon 
you. Only the old pointer moves unceas- 
ingly in his frame. Is the movement of the 
picture due to the furnace heat behind the 
partition wall ? To you, perhaps. To me 
he is plainly motioning to the covers. 

Methinks, also, that my good Irish ter- 
rier, who is often by my side, looks up 
at the fox's pelt more intently as autumn 



When Leaves Grow Sere. 



draws on apace. The fox may suggest the 
covers and its denizens to him, as the mo- 
tion of the pointer suggests them to me — 
the fleet forms that haunt their mazy fast- 
nesses, the hares and rabbits and vanishing 
shadows, his steel sinews are eager to pur- 
sue. Surely his sharply pointed ears, his 
quivering muscles, and his glittering hazel 
eyes are in sympathy with the movements 
of the pointer, and second his invitation to 
the woods. 

Musing upon the ancient print, with its 
rolling background of hill and dale, I some- 
times picture the scene of desolation which 
would ensue were the woods and waters 
stripped of their native tenants — the game 
which is at once their glory and their joy. 
Fancy the landscape denuded of the wild 
life that is as indigenous as its flora, that is 
nurtured upon its mast, and derives suste- 
nance from the very twigs and leaves of its 
vegetation. Conceive, if it be possible, 
streams with no trout to people their pools 
and shallows, waters that never mirrored 
the wood-drake's mail, and lakes unruffled 
by the web of wild fowl. 

Imagine the woodlands with no grouse 
to beat the reveille of spring, no hares to 
thread their shaded labyrinths, no fox to 
prowl through their coverts. Silence the 
scream of the hawk, and the voice of 
the owl, crow, and jay, and instantly the 



90 The Story of my House. 

landscape would be deprived of half its 
beauty, its innate beauty of sound. Game 
is the essence of the woods and free, un- 
civilized Nature — the division line that sep- 
arates the wild from the tame — and he 
whose nerves have never tingled at the 
electric whir of a game-bird's wing and the 
responsive boom of the double-barrel has 
remained insensible to one of the most in- 
spiring exhilarations of the senses. Just as 
the library refreshes and stimulates the 
mind, so do the woods, the streams, and 
the stubbles become a field of health for the 
body, and by the invigorating and elevating 
recreation they yield do field sports serve 
to strengthen both mind and body. Enough 
for me that autumn is here ; I must accept 
the invitation of the old pointer, and exam- 
ine for myself what the woods have in 
store. 

Brilliant as they are in the flush of their 
October splendor, they will lose but little 
of their beauty as autumn wanes. The 
bare trees extend and expand the landscape 
for me, contributing enchantments of dis- 
tance that only denuded vegetation may 
reveal. Then, with the weather in a gra- 
cious mood, I obtain effects that the green 
entanglement of summer never knew. The 
purple bloom upon my hills is never half so 
exquisite as when a thaw has freed them 
temporarily from their coverlet of snow, 



When Leaves Grow Sere. 91 

disclosing their russet slopes and leafless 
trees. A new palette of color is presented 
in these subtle gradations of umber and 
ochre, of drab and of bronze, that drape the 
withered stubbles. Sere and faded in the 
latter year, the lonely marsh is yet radiant 
with subdued hues when touched by the 
afternoon splendor. The hush which broods 
upon the landscape, too, has a charm of its 
own, in harmony with the quiet tones of 
the slumbering woods. The very lisp of 
the chickadee and solemn tap of the nut- 
hatch only intensify the repose of Nature, 
and I question if the combined glories of the 
midsummer twilight, when the bat and 
night-hawk raced upon the evening sky, 
yielded anything so radiantly beautiful as 
the slant November sunlight streaming 
through the trees of the lowland, its vivid 
crimsons reflected in the pools below. 

The airy spray of the beech I may ad- 
mire only during winter, and only when it 
stands divested of its summer garniture 
may I behold the marvelous framework of 
the elm. Attractive as it is when masked by 
the bloom and leafage of summer, the thorn 
develops a new beauty in its gnarled and 
naked branches and the hoariness of its gray 
antiquity. Loveliest, too, are the birch and 
hemlock in midwinter; whilst the swamp, 
ablaze with the scarlet fruit of the Prinos 
and smooth winterberry, presents its most 



92 The Story of my House. 

vivid life above the snow. From it, likewise, 
I catch the gleam of the golden willow,, with 
purple rufous lights that smolder amid the 
twigs and branchlets of the shrubs which 
seek its cool and solitude. Again, when 
the snow comes sifting down from the pal- 
lid sky, what magical effects do I not ob- 
tain amid the dark mysterious depths of the 
hemlock woods! Even then my hills and 
woods offer a glorious excuse for an outing. 
For have I not long pictured in imagination 
the shadowy vistas where I know the big 
white hares are in waiting ? 

It is worth scaling a dozen hillsides to 
breathe such air and obtain such views. 
No play of sunlight on an English South 
Down could be finer, and no lines of beauty 
fairer than those revealed by distant table- 
land and wide-extending vale. A silence, 
broken only by the roar of far-off railroad 
trains or the ring of the woodsman's axe, 
rests like a benediction over all, a sleep of 
Nature — peaceful, deep, profound. 

Within the shelter of the wood, beneath 
the refuge of the evergreens and under- 
growth, it is warm ; without, the gale may 
rave, and, above, the tree-tops wail a requiem 
for the departing year; but here below it is 
protected as within the walls of a building. 
On either hand extend the green arcades of 
the hemlocks, like the nave and transepts 
of a cathedral. The downy woodpecker 



When Leaves Grow Sere. 93 

and titmouse are here, ever present as chor- 
isters ; the wild life of the woods is here, 
the companionship of bird and beast and 
dormant vegetable life. There is life beat- 
ing beneath the mold, beneath the snowy 
mantle — the ermine with which Nature 
keeps her treasures warm. There is life — 
nimble, fleet, and stirring — above the tell- 
tale snow. 

That is a fox's track leading to his den 
on the hillside, the return trail of Reynard 
whose sortie toward the barn-yards you 
previously noticed. When he started on 
his foray his pace was a walk, as his foot- 
steps close together reveal. Warily he was 
proceeding under cover of the darkness, 
planning the best means of ingress to his 
gallinaceous goal. All the caution of a 
skilled general on the eve of a decisive bat- 
tle is apparent in his skulking foot-prints. 
His dreaded enemies are well known. 
Only yesterday the hounds were hot in his 
pursuit, and the echoes reverberated with 
the volley of barbarous vulpicedes, which 
happily fell wide of its mark. But he will 
outwit them all! His trained cunning has 
taught him the danger of traps and gins; 
his fleet foot has long borne him through 
many a loop-hole of escape. The stork's 
invitation to dine must needs be deftly per- 
fumed and framed on an unusually tempting 
card to induce him to take his claret out of 



94 The Story of my House. 

long-necked carafes or his pate de foiegras 
from metal tureens. 

The tracks leading back from the farm- 
yard show him to have been jogging along 
at a more rapid gait. The prints are the 
same, except that they are farther apart, 
one following directly behind the other, 
Indian filewise, in an almost straight line. 
His object accomplished, there was no 
further need of extreme caution or dalliance. 
From a safe distance he had watched the 
lights in the farm-house till one by one 
they were extinguished, had waited until 
all was silent, and his keen scent apprised 
him that danger was past. It was then an 
easy matter to pounce upon and bear off 
the unsuspecting prey. Along his return 
trail there are feathers strewed here and 
there, attesting conclusively that his raid 
was successful. 

Lightly he tripped along with elevated 
brush, the booty slung over his shoulder, 
to the safeguard of his den. Obviously be- 
fore reaching his haven he has been startled 
by something. The tracks, still in a straight 
line, become much farther apart; the trot 
has given place to a canter for a few rods,, 
when his former gait is resumed. The 
baying of a hound, perchance, from his 
kennel on the farther hillside, or the bark 
of a fellow-vulpine freebooter, has quick- 
ened his pace for the moment. Where he 



When Leaves Grow Sere. 95 

struck into a gallop the prints of his nails 
are visible; these do not show when he 
progresses on his customary trot or walk, 
so well are his feet protected for extended 
predations by the thick fur padding between 
the toes. His long sweeping brush never 
once touched the snow, burdened though 
he was by his plunder. This he carries 
well up, knowing the increased weight it 
would engender should he get it wet. A 
cat is not more careful of her dainty feet 
than is sly Reynard of his precious tail. 

In general, a fox that has acquired a 
taste for poultry is considered rather an un- 
desirable subject for the chase proper. A 
poultry fox always makes his headquarters 
near the farmsteads. His daily beat, there- 
fore, is limited as to distance compared 
with his brethren who subsist by foraging 
in the woods, and whose nightly rounds 
embrace a very much larger territory. Usu- 
ally a poultry fox, if started, does not take 
a straight line very far, but, after leading a 
short distance, commences to circle, coming 
round to the place of starting after the man- 
ner of the hare. A fox who subsists on 
game knows all the fat covers of the neigh- 
borhood where the most game lies. His 
extended tramps give him wind, fleetness, 
and endurance, while his familiarity with 
every rod of the covers stands him in excel- 
lent stead when hotly pursued. 



96 The Story of my House. 

A round glittering eyeball, bright as a 
coal of fire, is scrutinizing you from beneath 
a pile of brushwood at the edge of the 
cover. Scarcely is the gun discharged ere 
a small covey of quail spring close at hand. 
Investigation is needless to reveal the baf- 
fled assassin; the tell-tale tracks upon the 
snow, round like those of a fox, but smaller, 
and the distance between considerably less, 
divulge the nature of the trespasser. It is 
none other than a cat, the petted tabby of 
the farmstead, that spends a large portion 
of its time in stalking game — a poacher 
scarcely less destructive than its fierce wild 
congener. When once a taste for game has 
been formed, pursuit is thenceforward con- 
tinual and relentless, till the offender usually 
ends by adopting a permanent woodland 
abode, where it thrives lustily, increasing 
in size and acquiring a heavy coat of fur. 

Look at this much-traveled esplanade, 
where the tracks show so thickly upon the 
snow. Overnight the hares and rabbits 
have been browsing upon the young beech, 
maple, and hemlock buds, with an occa- 
sional sally into the brier patches. The 
numerous trails indicate they have availed 
themselves of the bright moonlight to con- 
tinue their feeding longer than usual. On 
moonlight nights the Leporidce always travel 
most; on cold, blustering nights they sel- 
dom leave their forms. Birds and animals 



When Leaves Grow Sere. 97 

dislike to venture out during stormy weather 
unless impelled by hunger. At such times 
a wood throbbing with animate life seems 
entirely deserted by its furred and feathered 
population. Vainly, then, the pointer or 
setter may quarter the ground; the game 
lies concealed and apparently scentless be- 
neath the brush and hiding-places, refusing 
to leave its refuge unless almost stepped 
upon. An apparently similar disappearance 
of game is often noticeable when the weather 
is fair immediately preceding a storm. The 
squirrels are warmly housed in their nests 
within the trees. Many of the grouse seek 
shelter amid the dense hemlocks, sitting 
close to the trunks on the leeside of the 
storm, protected by the thick foliage and 
their own matting of feathers. The closest 
of beating then goes for little, so that in a 
wood where you know game exists in com- 
parative abundance it appears a mystery 
whither all its wild life has fled. 

The white hare and rabbit tracks — if the 
smaller Lepus may be referred to as a rabbit 
— which strew the ground are identical save 
in size. There are first the marks of the 
hind feet, side by side, followed by those 
of the fore feet, one behind the other. Thus 
it is seen the gait is always a lope or bound, 
and that in springing the hare brings up 
with his hind feet nearest the head, alight- 
ing, however, on all fours at once. His 



The Story of my House. 



long, powerful hind-quarters seem made of 
rubber sinews, the crooked stifles and great 
strength of thigh acting as levers to the 
supple body framed with special regard to 
speed — his sole protection. In reaching for 
the buds and young shoots of the under- 
growth during the deep snows, he is ma- 
terially aided by his long hind legs. 

Under the beeches the squirrels have 
been busy scratching for the mast; these 
appear to be the most restless foragers of 
the wood, their trails being by far the most 
numerous. Like the hare's and rabbit's, 
their gait is a lope. As he lands from his 
spring, the hind feet of the squirrel touch 
the ground nearest the head, as in the case 
of the hare and rabbit, but the two forward 
feet, instead of striking one before the other, 
strike nearly side by side, like a single foot- 
fall. Occasionally, not often, he prints simi- 
larly to the rabbit in the position of the feet, 
although always smaller and somewhat less 
pointed. The large blacks and grays are 
persecuted by the smaller pugnacious reds, 
which frequently drive them entirely out of 
a wood, first pilfering their nests of the 
shack they have stored. 

Here Master Reynard has been mousing, 
seated on a stump intently watching, his 
flowing brush clear of the snow ; the air is 
tainted with his strong odor. Where he 
made a leap his footmarks are distinctly 



When Leaves Grow Sere. 99 

visible amid the numerous tracks of the 
field-mice — a dainty of which he is ex- 
tremely fond. Yonder is the scene of an 
oft-enacted woodland tragedy, with Rey- 
nard in his great title role of slayer. There, 
beneath the shelter of an uprooted beech, a 
grouse had repaired for his nightly slumber, 
his head screened from the moonlight under 
his protecting wings. The impress of his 
form is clearly molded upon the snow. 
But, alas ! his now tattered plumage and a 
prowling fox's foot-prints attest his grim 
awakening when his relentless foe discov- 
ered his retreat. For this had his wings 
so often rung defiance to the double-barrel; 
to this ignominious end had he come at 
last ! Were the ghosts of murdered grouse 
to haunt the scenes of their earthly sojourn, 
they might rattle their featherless wings in 
triumph to know that on this self-same 
hillside, but a few rods from the scene of 
the tragedy, Master Reynard met his fate, 
a week afterward, in the jaws of clamorous 
hounds. 

It requires a very warm day in winter 
to tempt a coon from his hibernacle. To- 
day his large flat prints and zigzag course 
are not observable ; he is snugly clad in his 
fur overcoat within the fastness of a shelter- 
ing tree. The ground-hog is sealed in his 
burrow outside the wood, having "pulled 
his hole in after him " ; this he covers up 
7 



The Story of my House. 



with leaves and earth, until, after his pro- 
tracted slumber, he emerges to view his 
shadow in the spring. 

That was an owl which skimmed the 
air so silently, on wings soft as eider-down, 
noiseless as a butterfly, and stealthy as a 
fox's tread. It is not often one sees an 
owl, however; in the day-time he usually 
sleeps, seldom leaving his retreat till dusk, 
unless during gloomy weather. The little 
or screech owls are more frequently seen 
by day than the larger species. With the 
hawk, crow, jay, skunk, and fox, the owl 
is extremely destructive to eggs and young 
birds during the nesting season, large owls 
not hesitating to pounce upon full-grown 
hares, and sharing with the fox a great 
fondness for poultry. The skunk leaves a 
print similar to that of the fox and cat, bar- 
ring its reduced size. There are invariably 
numbers of these threading the runways 
and leading to and from the farmsteads. 

There is a murmur like unto many voices 
in the woods' mysterious depths, as if Pan 
and his train of Oreads were holding a revel 
within. It is a combination of numerous 
sounds that produces these ceaseless whis- 
pers of the woods. You hear them in sum- 
mer when the insect choirs are chanting an 
aerial melody and the hermit-thrush sings 
as if he had a soul; you hear them in winter 
when the wind sobs amid the needles of 



When Leaves Grow Sere. 



the pines, and the woodpecker's hammer 
resounds unceasingly from hollow trees; 
you hear them now, on every hand, a chorus 
of voices, the forest's pulsations — a palpable 
part and portion of its solitude. How weird 
the cry of the blue jay, the loon of the 
woods, whose startling scream sounds like 
that a faun might utter in despair! His sap- 
phire coronet is not for you, however; he 
jeers at you in strident tones from his strong- 
hold in the tree-tops, keeping close watch 
of you, but taking care to remain well out 
of range. Like his clamorous friend the 
crow, he has scented F. F. F. powder be- 
fore. At intervals the airy treble of the tree- 
sparrow swells the sylvan choir — a minor 
but most melodious addition to the chorus. 
When the powdery snow patters upon the 
withered leaves and the stillness is other- 
wise almost unbroken, you may hear his 
carillon while he feeds on the tender buds 
of the sweet birch. " A merry heart goes 
all the day " is his motto and the tenor of 
his blithe refrain. 

There are grouse tracks also that have 
left their reflection in winter's mirror — the 
roving feet of the brown forest hermit, the 
daintiest print upon the snow. Unless dis- 
turbed, the ruffed-grouse will travel a great 
distance on foot through the woods in quest 
of food. A single bird will leave a surpris- 
ing number of tracks in the course of his 



102 The Story of my House. 



protracted wanderings, so that one is often 
puzzled at the comparative scarcity of birds. 
But even on the snow he is extremely diffi- 
cult to detect, so closely does he blend with 
his surroundings. Not until he springs with 
sonorous pinions close at your side are you 
made aware of his precise location, when 
you wonder you had not observed him be- 
fore. All game is alike in this respect — 
difficulty of detection — even to the brilliantly 
marked trout, which assume the general 
color of the bottom of streams in which 
they lie. 

Should you shoot a crow amid your 
rambles, a swarm of mourners will quickly 
be in attendance on the remains. Within 
a few minutes every ebon inhabitant of the 
neighborhood, apprised by the alarm of its 
companions, may be seen winging its way 
thereto with loud cawings. It can not be 
the sense of sight alone that locates the 
dead, for the discovery will not unfrequent- 
ly occur in thick cover or open glade. 

One of the numerous runways of the 
hares, within gunshot of which you have 
taken position, extends through a glade, 
affording ample opportunity to observe the 
game. The eager hounds have struck the 
scent leading to a form in a thicket of brier 
where the quarry lies concealed. The star- 
tled hare leaps from his covert, with the 
hounds in full cry coming directly toward 



When Leaves Grow Sere. 103 

you, until, turning into another runway, the 
music recedes in the distance. Amid the 
frenzy of pursuit two other hares have been 
started, the deep baying indicating the 
course of the divided pack. Round and 
round the fleet hares circle, one of them 
after a prolonged flight approaching your 
standpoint. His agile dash for liberty has 
left his pursuers in the rear, and he pauses 
— a white silhouette of living beauty, and 
the embodiment of nimble speed — for. a 
survey. He sits upon his great hind legs — 
his only safeguard — turning his long clean- 
cut ears forward and backward, each one 
singly, to focus the sound. The music 
swells into a grand crescendo, the twigs 
crackle beneath the trampling of many feet, 
and the hare is off again with the speed of 
the racer. The baying of the pack indicates 
the direction of pursuit, whether the game 
is coming or going. A hare always circles, 
returning sooner or later to the place he 
started from; he never " holes," like the 
rabbit, unless in a log when exhausted. To 
baffle the dogs he will sometimes imitate 
his wily master, Reynard, by taking his 
back track for quite a distance, and then, 
leaping aside, to strike out on a fresh course ; 
by this means he gains a breathing-spell 
and puzzles his foes. 

So the sport progresses, and the bag 
mounts with the lengthening shadows. An 



104 The Story of my House. 

owl is sounding his weird "tu-whoo!" 
when the hounds come in with lolling 
tongues and trembling flanks from the pro- 
longed excitement of the chase. The last 
hare has carmined the snow with his life- 
blood, and the heavy spoils are harled and 
strung. The flaming fires of sunset are 
smoldering into ashen embers in the soft 
southwest; the tender violets of the remote 
table-lands chill to colder purples with day's 
decline ; the marshaled ranks of the skeleton 
trees stand out upon the hills as if limned in 
India ink; the mellow hyemal twilight 
deepens over woodland and valley, till the 
perfect winter day merges into the moonlit 
winter night and the vale of the sport. 





VI. 

DECORATIVE DECORATIONS. 

All arts are one, howe'er distributed they stand; 
Verse, tone, shape, color, form, are fingers on one hand. 

W. W. Story. 

^hile I make no pretense of vying 
with the shops of bric-a-brac 
and curios — it has been said the 
modern house has come to re- 
semble a magazine of bric-a-brac 
— yet, somehow, I find a great many ob- 
jects which would be classed under this 
definition have gradually drifted or floated 
in, and have become as much of an artistic 
and companionable feature of the house as 
the paintings on the walls. Especially since 
the arrival of my ship, when several large 
bales with cabalistic marks and lettering 
proved on opening to be a veritable reposi- 
tory of ancient Oriental workmanship and 
design. 

I can conceive of no more hideous night- 
mare than that which must haunt one who 
is obliged to live in intimate companionship 
with many of the so-called " ornaments" 



106 The Story of my House. 

that dealers and the fashion of the hour force 
upon one, and that, in one guise or another, 
must ever be snarling and snapping at the 
unfortunate possessor. Littered up with 
all sorts of outre and unmeaning knick- 
knacks, the home at once becomes a place 
to flee from; and instead of the spirit of 
quiet elegance and congruity which should 
prevail, there reigns a pandemonium of dis- 
conformity. Yet a certain amount of bric- 
a-brac is not only admissible but requisite 
to the decorative atmosphere of the interior. 
Its effect depends upon the choosing. Given 
a correct eye for color and form and a natural 
feeling for harmony, Sir William Temple's 
sentence is pertinent, "The measure of 
choosing well is whether a man likes what 
he has chosen." Like my paintings, rugs, 
and etchings, so also my porcelains, bronzes, 
arms, and armor are pleasing objects for the 
eye to rest upon ; and, ranged upon the 
shelves and about the apartments, minister 
equally in the expression and variety they 
lend to the surroundings. 

I rejoice in my collection of arms and 
armor. Many rare antiques from the Stam- 
boul bazaars my ship contained — lovely in- 
laid Persian guns, exquisitely mounted Al- 
banian pistols, antique rapiers, daggers, and 
swords, ancient kandjars and yataghans, 
with scabbards of repousse silver, of velvet, 
of copper, of shagreen and Ymen leather; 



Decorative Decorations. 107 

with handles of jade, agate, and ivory, con- 
stellated with garnets, turquoises, corals, 
and girasols; long, narrow, large, curved; 
of all forms, of all times, of all countries; 
from the Damascene blade of the Pasha, in- 
crusted with verses of the Koran in letters 
of gold, to the coarse knife of the camel- 
driver. How many Zeibecs and Arnauts, 
how many beys and effendis, how many 
omrahs and rajahs have not stripped their 
girdles to form this precious arsenal which 
would have rendered Decamps mad with 
joy ! * 

There are, moreover, glistening helmets 
and coats-of-mail, corslets, maces, spears 
and hauberks, battle-axes and halberds, 
bucklers of tortoise-shell and Damascene 
steel — all the implements of the ferocious 
ingenuity of Islam. On the blue blade of 
this magnificent yataghan, still keen and 
glittering, its ivory handle inlaid with topaz 
and turquoise, is graven the number of 
heads it has severed. These cruel swords, 
now crossed so peacefully, were once 
crossed in savage strife and brandished in 
hate upon the battle-field amid the blare of 
Mussulman trumpets and the shouts of 
murderous Janizaries. Often, as the sun- 
light strikes the lustrous steel, do they 
seem to leap into life and flash anew in re- 

* Gautier. Constantinople — Les Bazars. 



108 The Story of my House. 

membrance of the battle-cry of Mohammed. 
Though mostly of great age, my arms and 
armor are all in a state of perfect preserva- 
tion. For mere antiquity in art objects or 
curios is not desirable in itself. Age has its 
charms unquestionably, but it becomes a 
valuable factor only when accompanied by 
beauty. Where an object loses its pristine 
beauty through time, age is a detriment 
rather than a desideratum. With many 
classes of art objects time heightens their 
attraction, or at least does not detract from 
it. In all such, age is a desirable quantity. 
To be old is generally to be rare; but an 
object may be rare and still be undesirable. 
Objects that are extremely sensitive to 
wear are usually worthless when old. 
Others, like tapestries and Oriental textiles, 
are improved by use, and gain in richness 
and value through age. An ancient textile 
or article of bric-a-brac is only desirable 
when, added to intrinsic beauty of texture, 
color, form, or design, it preserves its 
youth in its antiquity, or acquires addi- 
tional attractiveness through time. 

Naturally, my ship contained many fine 
stuffs and hangings — old Flemish, French, 
and Italian tapestries, embroideries from 
Broussa and Salonica, Spanish brocades, 
and brocades from Borhampor and Ah- 
medabad, with some priceless ancient altar 
cloths, chasubles, and dalmaticas I had long 



Decorative Decorations. 109 

desired to possess. Yet with all these and 
other acquisitions, now that the bloom of 
first possession is brushed off, may I de- 
clare without prevarication that I am fully 
satisfied ? Increase of appetite but grows 
on what it feeds. Collecting begets col- 
lecting, the desire for possession constantly 
increasing, ever goading one on to unrest 
in the quest of the unprocurable. How 
much one misses with a little knowledge, 
and how much one gains! The love for 
beauty too often proves a bane. Even a 
love for books is as dangerous as a love 
for bric-a-brac or art objects — the book in 
the end becoming an art object. Gradual- 
ly, from the ordinary editions one passes 
to the good editions, while from the good 
it is but a step to the rare and the seeth- 
ing maelstrom of book-madness. My ship 
brought me many of my decorations; my 
books, with few exceptions, I must pro- 
cure myself. 

But though sometimes productive of re- 
grets, no one should be without a hobby, 
or hobbies. " Have not the wisest of men 
in all ages, not excepting Solomon himself 
— have they not had their hobby-horses ? " 
asks Sterne. "The man without a hobby 
may be a good citizen and an honest fel- 
low," observes George Dawson, in his al- 
together lovely volume, The Pleasures of 
Angling, "but he can have but few golden 



The Story of my House. 



threads running through the web or woof 
of his monotonous existence." A hobby is 
the best of preceptors, and rides straight to 
the mark. From a good collection of por- 
celains one may study the Chinese dynas- 
ties, and prepare himself for an Asiatic tour 
by a study of his rugs. Unconsciously the 
collector of arms and armor becomes a 
student of the history of numerous peoples 
and an eye-witness of many of the noted 
battles of the world. Were I desirous to 
thoroughly familiarize myself with the his- 
tory of the American red man I should first 
proceed to collect Indian implements of the 
chase and war, supplementing these by 
close study in the fertile field of literature 
pertaining to the Indians. But my bows 
and arrows I should shoot first; they would 
be the guide to the target. 

One of the essays of Elia has demon- 
strated the fallacy of the adage ' ' enough is 
as good as a feast." In decorations it were 
a scant feast without the endless form and 
color supplied by the potter's art. Of all 
art objects, a truly fine piece of old porce- 
lain is amongst the most beautiful. In col- 
or it may outshine a precious stone ; in 
form, rival that of a beautiful object of Na- 
ture herself. Its very frailty and frangibility 
intensify its charm, and when possessing 
both grace of contour and enchantment of 
color it becomes an object of beauty by the 



Decorative Decorations. 



canons of the most perfect art, exciting the 
profoundest and purest pleasure — profound 
pleasure to all who behold it, supreme 
pleasure to him who possesses it. 

I speak of the finer examples of Oriental 
ceramics, though I grant there is much to 
admire in some of the Italian soft-paste por- 
celains, notably the lovely Capo di Monte 
productions of the first period and the fas- 
cinating Doccia terraglias. Royal Worces- 
ter, despite its finish, always looks new, 
and Sevres wares I invariably associate 
with a gilded French salon and crimson 
brocatelle. These may be of excellent de- 
sign and highly wrought decoration, rep- 
resenting infinite labor, skill, and minutiae 
of detail ; but they seldom seem effective 
compared with the handiwork of the Orien- 
tal. For the most part European ceramics 
may not be included under Prof. Grant 
Allen's term, " decorative decoration." 
Among Oriental porcelains, it is well 
known that articles produced to-day may 
not be compared with the same class pro- 
duced in the past. The secret of the mar- 
velous old glazes has been lost, like the 
secret of the famed old Toledo blades, and 
the craft of the ancient metal workers. It 
is the remote Celestial we admire and re- 
vere. 

Apparently, my ship must have touched 
some of the out-of-the-way ports of Hoi- 



The Story of my House. 



land, that paradise of blue and white, for 
her collection of ceramics was rich in this 
form of Oriental porcelains. It has been 
asserted that the love for blue and white is 
a fashion, a craze that can not endure. But 
fine blue and white from its very nature is 
beyond the caprice of fashion, and must be 
enduring for all time. What other blend- 
ing approximates so closely to Nature ? It 
is but a Celestial reflex of the firmament — 
the most beautiful of all sky formations, the 
summer cumulus cloud. A coolness of 
color it has possessed by no other form of 
porcelain unless by the incomparable old 
solid blue and blue-green enamels. 

Not that my ship's stores were limited 
to the blue and white so lavishly distributed 
among the appreciative Dutch burghers by 
the fleets of a former day. There were 
also many chrysanthemce that could only 
have been gathered from the classic gardens 
of the Celestial himself— specimens from 
the periods of Wan-li, Kia-tsing, Ching-te, 
Ching-hoa, Siouen-te, and yet still earlier 
rulers of the great dynasty of the Mings ; di- 
aphanous egg-shells of the reign of Yong- 
tching ; Kien-long glazes fabricated in 
imitation of the color and texture of old 
bronzes ; delicate sea-green celadons ; solid 
deep iridescent reds ; and frail translucent 
white pastes — marvels of the furnaces of the 
past. It would require a Jacquemart or a 



Decorative Decorations. 113 

Dana to describe them. However alien 
races may regard the Mongolian and his 
flowing pigtail, there can be but one opin- 
ion of the forms and colors crystallized in 
these his airy inspirations. Matchless stands 
the ancient Chinese potter's art. The world 
might find a substitute for his tea ; his finer 
vases, jars, and bottles, and his fantasies 
in storks and dragons are unique this side 
of paradise. From the ordinary blue of 
Nankin to the "blue of the head of Bud- 
dha," the "blue of heaven," the "blue of 
the sky after rain," the " lapis lazuli," and 
the priceless "turquoise," my blue porce- 
lains are a study of the clouds and the sky. 
Blue! "the life of heaven," the hue of 
ocean, the violet's joy ; type of faith and 
fidelity, it has remained for the almond- 
eyed molder of clay to render its beauty 
tangible. When I admire the hues of a 
Chinese vase or bottle, 1 remember that 
each color is regarded as a symbol ; the 
fundamental colors being five, and corre- 
sponding to the elements (water, fire, 
wood, metals, earth), and to the cardinal 
points of the compass. Red belongs to 
fire, and corresponds to the south ; black 
to water and the north ; green to wood 
and the east ; white to metal and the west. 
Dark blue corresponds to the sky, and yel- 
low to the earth ; blue belongs to the east. 
Blue is combined with white, red with 



The Story of my House. 



black, and dark blue with yellow. The 
dragon, which in the Chinese zodiac corre- 
sponds to our Aries, also personifies water, 
while a circle personifies fire.* 

Of the bloom of the peach my ship 
contained no example, so factitious a value 
has been set upon this color by pretended 
connoisseurs. In place of the peach-blow, 
I found gleaming among my ceramics a 
much more beautiful form of opalescent 
porcelain — two vases of the extremely rare 
" topaz," brilliant as the gem itself, and of 
which these are unique examples. Did I 
say my rugs supplied the rarest colors ? 
I had forgotten my old bottle of bleu 
de ciel and my ancient vase of sang de 
bceuf! 

The bronzes my ship contained differed 
essentially from the generality of those I 
had previously known. Apart from a few 
fine specimens enriched with gold and sil- 
ver, and a superb figure of Buddha, they 
consisted for the most part of a singularly 
beautiful collection of ancient tripods, tem- 
ple-censers and incense-burners, with dark 
patine and antique-green surfaces, and en- 
graved ornamentation and ornamentation in 
relief. The largest incense urn occupies a 
prominent place in the hall, and often curls 
its fragrant clouds through the mouth of its 

* Jacquemart. Histoire de la Ceramique. 



Decorative Decorations. 1 1 5 

dragon. I light it when I read A Kempis 
and the Religio Medici. 

Yet the stores of my ship would have 
been incomplete without an old hall-clock 
that marks the time for me. An old Dutch 
inlaid hall-clock of all clocks for symmetry, 
beauty, and sonority ! It measures rather 
than accelerates the flight of the hours ; and 
with its quarter chimes, its deep hour-bells, 
its moons, and its calendars, it punctuates 
not only the moments and the hours, but 
chronicles the passage of the months and 
the years. I need not consult a watch for 
the time, or a calendar for the day of the 
month and the phases of the moon — the 
musical voice and the index-fingers of my 
clock proclaim them for me. 

Among my most valued curios is a 
superb violoncello. A glance shows that 
it has been long and tenderly caressed by 
the virtuoso who once possessed it and 
developed its melodious voice. Even its 
ancient case and the green baize of the lin- 
ing attest the care it has received. Scarce- 
ly a scratch is visible on the lustrous wood, 
and its curves are as harmoniously propor- 
tioned as those of a Hebe. There is a rich, 
mellow tone to the wood, and the bow 
draws tones no less rich and mellow from 
its deep caverns of sound. Though there 
are no traces of the maker's name or the 
date of manufacture, the lovely glaze of the 
8 



1 1 6 The Story of my House. 

spruce top and rnaple back at once pro- 
claim its antiquity. Beneath the strings 
the rosin has left a fine mahogany stain ; 
and there are worn spots on the hoops 
where it has been pressed by a loving 
knee. The grain of the top is as straight 
as if it had been molded. At the base 
of the gracefully turned scroll, in old 
English script, is carved an "H," its only 
mark. 

I find the same difference between a 
violin and a violoncello as there exists be- 
tween a piano and an organ. The differ- 
ence of tone between individual violoncellos 
is, if anything, more marked than in most 
other musical instruments. There could be 
nothing more sonorous and more delicately 
shaded than the magnificent baritone of my 
old violoncello as it interprets the Cavatine 
by Raff, or chants the Andante by Mozart. 
Sometimes, methinks, it gives forth a still 
richer consonance when it renders Stra- 
della's grave Kirchen-Arie; or, indeed, 
whenever noble church music of any kind 
is drawn from its resonant depths. Then 
its voice seems almost human, and the 
strings quiver apparently of their own ac- 
cord. Is it fancy, after all ? Are not its 
strings sometimes swept by unseen fingers 
— the tender touch of The Warden of 
Barchester, good old Septimus Harding — 
who possessed it in years gone by ; who so 



Decorative Decorations. 1 1 7 

often found solace in its companionship 
from the tyranny of the archdeacon and the 
bickerings of Barchester Close ! I almost 
find myself, like the warden, passing an 
imaginary bow over an imaginary viol 
when annoyed or harassed away from 
home, so strong is its personality and so 
soothing its companionship.* Trollope has 
never been sufficiently appreciated, it ap- 
pears to me; and among his best works is 
his simplest one. The character of the 
warden, so exemplary and yet so vacillat- 
ing, the old men of the hospital who love 
him so tenderly, the crafty and worldly 
archdeacon, and, withal, the mellow eccle- 
siastical light that pervades the churchly 
precincts of the Close, form a picture 
beautiful in its quiet coloring and simplic- 
ity. It is far less a novel than an idyl, and 
as such it should be read and must be re- 
garded. 

Music and flowers ! The one suggests 
and complements the other. The home 
should never be without either — they are 
its brightest sunshine, next to lovely wo- 
man's smile and the laughter of a child. 
Averaged throughout the year, a dollar a 
week is a modest, reasonable outlay for a 
man of limited means to expend for the lux- 

* The Warden ; Barchester Towers. — Anthony Trol- 
lope. 



n8 The Story of my House. 

ury of flowers in the house. Every petal 
holds a beautiful thought, so long as the 
flower is beautiful and the petals are fresh. 
Even a few green leaves with a single fresh 
blossom or two are a solace to the eye 
and a balm to the mind. 





VII. 
MY STUDY WINDOWS. 

How perfect an invention is glass ! The sun rises 
with a salute, and leaves the world with a farewell to 
our windows. To have instead of opaque shutters, or 
dull horn or paper, a material like solidified air, which 
reflects the sun thus brightly ! — Thoreau. 

30-day a slaty sky, accompanied 
by vaporous clouds throughout 
the afternoon, is succeeded by a 
pale sunset, a vivid primrose 
band extending far, and linger- 
ing late along the southern horizon. 

I hear an angry wind at night, first 
tongued by the distant trees. Rising close 
to the edge of the river, the copse catches 
the least breath of the west, transmitting its 
voice through the trees. Each tree thus 
becomes a harp or viol played upon by the 
air in motion, producing a varied music 
according to the character of its spray. 
How different the sound of the summer 
wind ! the whispering and rustling of 
trillions of living leaves ; one might distin- 
guish the season by the sense of hearing 



120 The Story of my House. 

alone. Now that vegetation is devoid of 
foliage, there is so much less to obstruct the 
current of the air brought pure and unde- 
nted from the Western plains. This air, 
additionally sifted and clarified by its pas- 
sage through countless woods and primeval 
forests, I inhale in full draughts within my 
comfortable room. Gathered by the cold 
air-boxes, this oxygen and nitrogen is tem- 
pered and warmed by a single pound of 
steam below, before rising fresh and deli- 
cious through the registers above. Thus 
even in midwinter do I receive the essence 
of the meadows and the woods. 

Not less comfort and delight do I owe 
to glass than to coal. It retains the heat 
and excludes the frost. Scarcely the space 
of a foot separates my easy chair and sum- 
mer warmth from falling flakes and wintry 
cold. It lets in the balm of the sky and the 
grace of the leafless trees ; it serves to simu- 
late summer. Transparent to light and 
to outward forms, glass is merely translu- 
cent to sounds. I look out and see the 
trees rock and toss beneath the gale ; I list- 
en, and hear the wind rejoicing in his 
strength. Light and sunshine stream 
through my window-pane as though it 
were a part of the atmosphere. It is almost 
like the atmosphere — transparent, invisible, 
inodorous. No material used in the con- 
struction of the house imparts such an air 



My Study Windows. 



of richness from without as polished plate- 
glass. Is it not equally desirable within, 
to look out through ? Let the carpets, if 
necessary, have less depth of pile; but let 
in the landscape and the light as clearly 
as we may. To look at exterior objects 
through vitreous waves is to cheat the 
sight and rob pleasant surroundings of their 
charm. 

Again, the glass that brings the land- 
scape into my room shuts out the external 
world as readily as it lets it in — in the form 
of stained glass it passes from transparent 
to • translucent, but still retains its life 
through color. I would have in my hall 
above the landing a wheel-window of 
ancient stained glass to render daylight 
doubly beautiful and refined — a flood of 
violet like that concentrated and diffused 
by the windows of the tall clere-story of 
Tours. But the gorgeous stained glass of 
mediaeval days, such as still blazes in the 
old cathedrals, is an art of the past, and 
my ship contained it not amid her precious 
stores. 

Yet once more is glass transformed, and 
from transparent and translucent is changed 
to opaque — opaque, yet not opaque. Nei- 
ther clear nor colored, it possesses still more 
life in this its other form. For my mirrors 
not only receive light and color, but stamp 
them indelibly upon their surface. Placed 



The Story of my House. 



in certain positions, they even enable me to 
see through opaque surfaces. By a glance 
into the hall through the door of the room 
where I sit I may discern what transpires in 
the adjoining room, though divided from 
it by a solid wall. Without my mirrors I 
could not even recognize my outward self. 
They double the objects in my house ; they 
double the number of my guests ; they pos- 
sess a double life. They take the place of 
a Daubigny, for do they not reflect the Dau- 
bigny ? And lovely woman, how could 
she look so sweet without her second self 
— her mirror! 

The primroses in my garden are harbin- 
gers of spring; the primrose band in the 
south was the precursor of storm. All 
night the wind raved, bringing snow and 
still more wind with returning day. The 
weather-cock creaks ominously in its socket, 
pointing alternately west and northwest. I 
note a drop of twenty degrees in the tem- 
perature, and hereafter I shall distrust the 
primrose band. 

Again the strange light in the south, 
shining brightly throughout the afternoon. 
This band appears most vividly through a 
vista of the grounds which focuses a distant 
slope crowned with deciduous trees and 
isolated pines. I notice it, at times, dur- 
ing late autumn and early spring, or on 
mild winter days when the moisture of the 



My Study Windows. 123 

atmosphere may be perceptibly felt. The 
weather-vane always points to it, though 
no air be stirring — indeed, it only occurs 
during a calm. Glowing through the skele- 
ton trees, a lustrous primrose or lively cro- 
cus, it illumines and transfigures the entire 
horizon of the south, as if inviting to fol- 
low it to a blander clime. It seems almost 
more beautiful than sunlight ; it is col- 
ored sunlight screened from glare. When 
I attempt to trace it to the range of the 
southern hills it keeps receding to the hills 
and trees beyond — always present, ever out 
of reach. An observer standing there, in 
turn, would see it farther on, and these far- 
ther hills and trees would yield its lumi- 
nousness to the landscape more southward 
still. 

Is it typical of life — man grasping at an 
object only to see it disappear, seizing a 
pleasure to find it evanescent, relinquishing 
a hope for one yet more ephemeral; ever 
reaching for happiness to meet with disap- 
pointment at the goal ? 

Whence its origin ? in what distant sky 
does it first appear ? The swift wings of 
the hawk might trace it to its source ; for 
me it is intangible. Doubtless with a word 
the meteorologists would dispel the charm 
it holds. I prefer to regard it as an occult 
force, a mysterious weather-sign to flash 
upon the wintry gloom and foretell the 



124 The Story of my House. 

coming storm. In the present instance it 
brought yet more moisture, and was suc- 
ceeded the following day by fog and driv- 
ing mist, changing in the evening to sud- 
den cold and wind. 

A windy moonlight night, with clouds 
chasing each other like crests of advancing 
waves. The moon rides high in the west; 
the strong wind sweeps from the west. 
/Eolus and all his retinue are abroad. The 
hillside trees toss and boom like the sea- 
it is high tide in the air. The air becomes 
a sea, the clouds its surge, the trees the 
shingle upon which it beats. It fascinates 
like the sea! When the moon appears be- 
tween the rifts it seems stationary; when 
partly concealed under a white cloud, it ap- 
pears coursing rapidly westward, while the 
clouds seem traveling slowly eastward. 
The moon then becomes the voyager, and 
the squadrons of the sky the loiterers. Its 
luminousness is but slightly masked by the 
silver clouds, their translucency making 
them seemingly a source of light. Every 
now and then it disappears beneath a mass 
of inky breakers, gilding their outer crests 
ere taking its sudden plunge; it looks 
as if it were dropping from the sky. Al- 
most immediately it reappears, so fast the 
clouds are moving. Anon it dips beneath 
a snowy surge, to re-emerge and sink be- 
low a Cimmerean roller, just as a swimmer 



My Study Windows. 



dives into and is lost in the surf. Mean- 
while, the wind roars like an angry sea. 
This glory of the wintry night my 'glass 
brings into my room. But the silver lining 
and life of the moonlit clouds can not be 
traced in written words, nor the varied 
voices of the wind be rendered into musical 
bars. The moon and the sun shine so that 
all may see. The wind blows so that all 
may hear. 

I hear a new creak in my neighbor's 
weather-vane amid the moaning of the 
wind ; or is it the repeated far-off blowing 
of a horn ? Twice on my going to the door 
the sound suddenly ceases, to continue fit- 
fully on my return. I discover it is pro- 
duced merely by the side-light above my 
writing-table. Do we not thus frequently 
attribute ulterior motives to causes which 
exist only in imagination, or whose source 
originates with ourselves ? Often is the 
humming in our ear. 

At times the small black fly upon the pane 
May seem the black ox of the distant plain. 

How deceptive is sound ! The leaf-cricket's 
chant on hot summer nights seems to pro- 
ceed from the lawn, rods away ; he is sing- 
ing in the honeysuckle vine a few feet 
overhead. Not unfrequently, when sitting 
within doors, am I obliged to consider 
whether the monotonous humming I hear 



126 The Story of my House. 

is the planing-mill far remote or the pur- 
ring of the cat — my pet Maltese, who looks 
at me with her beryl-like eyes and arches 
her back to be stroked. But though she 
pricks up her ears when I scratch the un- 
der surface of the table, she does not long 
mistake the counterfeit for the wainscot 
mouse. 

Little sounds, like the petty annoyances 
of life, are frequently the most unpleasant. 
A great annoyance one meets forcibly, 
knowing it to be a necessary evil that must 
be put out of the way. The snake is killed 
or evaded ; the fly remains to harass. The 
roaring of the gale, the downpour from the 
sky — sounds loud and violent — are soothing 
rather than the reverse; the rattling of a 
window-blind is far more annoying. Who 
but the man that is filing it can hear with- 
out a shudder the filing of a saw, and who 
but the katydid himself can passively en- 
dure the katydid's stridulation ? 

A monotonous sound, providing it be 
not a rasping sound, the ear becomes ac- 
customed to, and misses when it ceases. 
The ticking of a clock, in itself unmusical, 
is, nevertheless, soothing ; you awaken 
when it suddenly stops. The nocturnal 
cricket's reiterated cry is a somnolent sound 
— a voice of the darkness and the dew. 
The grasshoppers' jubilant chorus sings 
away the fleeting summer hour, and by its 



My Study Windows. 127 

rising and falling pulsation marks the wax- 
ing and waning of the year. Even when 
immelodious, most sounds of external Na- 
ture are not irritating. The rattling of the 
window-pane exasperates — one intuitively 
anathematizes the carpenter; the angry 
creaking of the boughs has a meaning, and 
one accepts it as a fitting and necessary ac- 
companiment of the gale. The harsh bark- 
ing of a dog rouses one from slumber; it is 
plainly in most cases an annoyance which 
has no just reason for existence — the neigh- 
borhood were better off without it. 

The railroad whistles, scarcely farther 
removed and far more plainly heard, are 
not annoying. At once they are accepted 
by the mind as possessing a reason. For 
behind the whistle are the vast driving- 
wheels, the passengers, the mails, and the 
merchandise. When I hear the locomo- 
tive's whistle I feel the locomotive's power, 
and the significance of its strength. It is 
the voice of might and speed; the exultant 
neigh of the great iron charger. It sounds 
the hours for me. Day after day — night, 
morning, and afternoon — with the same ex- 
actitude, scarcely a minute after the engi- 
neer has opened the sounding-valve, do the 
cars, arriving and departing, pass along the 
opposite shore of the river. Far off among 
the distant valleys resounds the clatter of 
the oncoming train; now lost for a mo- 



128 The Story of my House. 

ment, now more distinctly heard. A mile 
and a half away on the still night air the 
whistle sounds, and the awakened echoes 
respond. I hear the roar through the gap 
of the hills, the crash across the bridge, the 
reverberating flight along the bank, the 
gradual receding and absorption of the 
sound. Nightly, expectantly, I listen for it, 
and miss it when the train is late. 

How much does not the arrival of the 
night express signify! how much of pain 
or pleasure to those it bears ! Friends who 
have parted, and friends who are waiting; 
news sad and joyous; regrets and hopes; 
hatred and love; laughter and tears; all the 
emotions and passions harbored in human 
hearts are present in the rapid flight of the 
train. The engineer at the throttle, the 
fireman who supplies the fuel — calm, watch- 
ful, serene at their posts amid the deafen- 
ing roar and jar — I think of them when the 
whistle sounds, plunging onward through 
the darkness and the storm. 

What a fascination exists in the flight of 
a train — an exhilaration to those on board, 
an ever-recurring marvel to those who wit- 
ness it pass by ! A speck in the distance, it 
momentarily enlarges till, thundering past, 
it instantly recedes, as swiftly lost as it was 
swift to appear. Onward it flies, annihi- 
lating space, outspeeding time, flinging the 
mile-posts behind, bearing its burden to 



My Study Windows. 129 

remote destinations. A moment it pauses 
to slake its thirst, or to deposit a portion of 
its burden, replacing it with fresh freight in 
waiting. Still onward it flies, linking vil- 
lages and towns, spanning streams, con- 
necting valleys, tunneling hills, joining 
States. Ever the crash and the roar, the 
great trail of smoke and steam, the en- 
gineer at the throttle — calm, watchful, se- 
rene — plunging through the darkness and 
the storm ! This the whistle means for 
me. 

Instantly I detect the whistles of the dif- 
ferent roads, some more musical, some 
more acute, some deeper, more sonorous 
in tone. Varying in resonance according 
to the state of the atmosphere, they apprise 
me of the temperature without, like the 
audible vibration of the rails themselves 
when passed over by the cars. Clear and 
musical in the early summer mornings, dur- 
ing cold weather they are more sibilant and 
piercing. They are a weather-vane to the 
ear, blown by heat or cold, responsive to 
the moisture or the dryness of the air. I 
observe similar acoustic effects in the tones 
of the distant bells. So that I may often 
prognosticate the weather as surely by ex- 
ternal sounds as by the shifting barometer 
of the hiils. 

Even through my windows I like to 
analyze the sentiment of animate sounds. 



\}o The Story of my House. 

"The nature of Sounds in general," re- 
marks the author of Sylva Sylvarum, "hath 
been imperfectly observed; it is one of the 
subtellest Peeces of Nature." During a 
ramble through the woods and fields I am 
impressed by the various emotions con- 
veyed by bird voices alone. Through 
them the woods and fields acquire an 
added meaning; they are the interpreters of 
Nature. Thus, the voice of the jay is a 
signal to inform his companions of danger; 
the scream of the hawk, a note of menace 
to intimidate his prey and cause it to reveal 
its whereabouts. The woodpecker's tap is 
a sound of industry. The mourning-dove's 
notes express sorrow ; the hermit-thrush's, 
ecstasy; the veery's, solitude; the white- 
throated sparrow's, content. The voices 
of the bluebird and song-sparrow are 
sounds of welcome, an exordium of spring. 
The plaintive whistle of the wood-pewee, 
the liquid warble of the purple finch, and 
the refrain of many a companion songster, 
it would require the fine ear and fancy of 
the poet to interpret aright. Perhaps Fred- 
erick Tennyson well defines the sentiment 
they express in his melodious rendering of 
the blackbird's song: 

The blackbird sings along the sunny breeze 
His ancient song of leaves and summer boon; 
Rich breath of hayfields streams through whispering 
trees; 



My Study Windows. 131 

And birds of morning trim their bustling wings, 
And listen fondly, while the blackbird sings. 

And how deliriously one of the sweet old 
Swabian singers has also voiced the black- 
bird of Europe, and interpreted his rippling 
strain : 

Vog'le im Tannenwald pfeifet so hell — 
Pfeifet de Wald aus und ein, wo wird mein Schatzle, 
sein? 
Vog'le im Tannenwald pfeifet so hell. 

Songster in pine-wood whistleth so clear — 
Whistleth the wood out and in, where hath my sweet- 
heart been ? 
Songster in pine-wood whistleth so clear. 

Is it a Minnesinger ? I wonder; for I can not 
place the poet who hymned the feathered 
minstrel so sweetly. My German friend 
the professor, who improvises in music as 
deftly as Heine improvised in verse, and to 
whom I repeated the lines the other day, 
was struck anew by their haunting melody. 
Seating himself at the piano, he immediately 
set them to this exquisite accompaniment. 
The music has been ringing in my ears ever 
since — a very echo of the songster, rising 
clear and jubilant from the shade of the 
wood. The words have been set to music 
before, a version being included in that me- 
lodious collection of national, student, and 
hunting songs entitled Deutscher Lieder- 
schatz. But this is commonplace com- 
9 



\ 3 2 



The Story of my House. 



pared to the rendition of my German friend. 
Try it those of you who have a voice to try ; 
or let your sweetheart try it for you. You 
will then appreciate the consummate art of 
the music — the ascending scale of the sec- 
ond bar felicitously phrasing the whistle of 
the bird, and the falling inflection of the 
third happily portraying the cool, shadowy 
depths of the wood. And how like a sil- 
very bird note of June the upper "g" in 
the seventh bar sounds the close of the 
refrain ! 



Allegro mf. 




Vog - le im Tan-nen-wald pfei - fet so hell, 
Song-ster in pine - wood whis-tleth so clear, 




My Study Windows. 



*33 




Wo wird mein Schatzle sein, wo wird es sein ? 
Where hath my sweetheart been, where hath she been ? 




Wo wird mein Schatzle sein, wo wird es sein ? 
Where hath my sweetheart been, where hath she been ? 

• IS 




134 



The Story of my House. 




No poet or prosatist, however, comes 
so near to the bird as the great prose-poet 
of the Wiltshire Downs: 

"The bird upon the tree utters the 
meaning of the wind — a voice of the grass 
and wild-flower, words of the green leaf; 
they speak through that slender tone. 
Sweetness of dew and rifts of sunshine, the 
dark hawthorn touched with breadths of 
open bud, the odor of the air, the color of 
the daffodil — all that is delicious and be- 
loved of spring-time are expressed in his 
song. Genius is nature, and his lay, like 
the sap in the bough from which he sings, 
rises without thought. Nor is it necessary 
that it should be a song; a few short notes 
in the sharp spring morning are sufficient 
to stir the heart. But yesterday the least of 
them all came to a bough by my window, 
and in his call I heard the sweet-brier wind 
rushing over the young grass." * 

Just what emotion the caw of the crow 
conveys 1 am at a loss to determine, unless 



* Richard Jefferies. Field and Hedgerow. 



My Study Windows. 135 

it be self-complacency — a harsh way of ex- 
pressing it, it would seem. His notes 
sound more like anger; and in the woods 
he certainly does quarrel with the owls, the 
song-birds, and his own kindred. But his 
apparent anger may be only feigned, and 
his voice belie his real character. Assur- 
edly, there was never a more self-compla- 
cent tread than the crow's on a grain field. 
The farmer and the scarecrow at once be- 
come secondary to him, and pilfering 
becomes almost a virtue, he pilfers with 
such grace. His tread is as majestic as the 
soaring of the hawk, and though black as 
night and evil, his plumage glistens as 
brightly as light and purity. He seems a 
true autochthon of the soil. It is much in 
the way things are done, after all ; boldness 
often passes for innocence, and self-confi- 
dence begets security. 

Gladness, serene contentment, is most 
strongly expressed to me by the bobolink, 
the "okalee" of the starling, and the singu- 
lar medley of the catbird. To be sure, the 
catbird frequently justifies his name, and is 
anything but an agreeable songster; but to 
make amends for his introductory discords 
he frequently gives us a delightful palinode. 
Plaintiveness, sadness over the departed 
summer, is conveyed by the blackbird's 
warble fluted over fields of golden-rod; it 
is expressed in the trembling notes of the 



136 The Story of my House. 

yellow-bird, as he scatters the thistle's floss 
to the winds. 

If we would carefully analyze the speech 
of external Nature, I doubt not we could 
trace some well-defined sentiment in nearly 
all animate sounds ; assuredly in very many of 
the voices of birds, animals, and insects. For 
Nature's moods and tenses are conveyed as 
strongly through the tympanum of the ear 
as through the retina of the eye. Their cor- 
rect interpretation depends upon our inner 
sight and hearing. I am not sure that in 
man's relation to Nature the sense of hear- 
ing does not contribute almost as much en- 
joyment as the sense of seeing. Certainly, 
Nature would seem but half complete with- 
out her characteristic voices. Think of her 
wrapped in the winding-sheet of eternal 
silence, a mere mummy, with no song of 
bird or whisper of wind to impart anima- 
tion to her scenes. Color and form are 
but half the landscape; it is sound that 
gives it life, and renders it companionable. 
What is winter, in one sense, but absence 
of sound, not merely the absence of bird 
and insect voices, but the rustling of leaves 
and grasses, the murmur of waters, the life 
and movement of growing vegetation ! 

Are not the first signs of spring con- 
veyed through sound ? Ere yet a song- 
bird can find an utterance, or grass-blade 
impart a sense of resurrected life I hear the 



My Study Windows. 137 

cracking of the ice and the gurgling of the 
frost-freed rills. The crow announces the 
change before the snowdrop comes, and the 
wild geese proclaim it from the sky before 
the sallows invite the precocious bee. No 
doubt the bee is already waiting for the 
flower, and winnows it into bloom ; for no 
sooner is the corolla ready to expand than I 
hear his murmurous wings. High in the 
willow catkins ; low down in the horn of the 
skunk-cabbage ; bending the yellow bloom 
of the first dog-tooth violet, his hum of in- 
dustry is heard. The bee is perhaps the first 
constant spring musician, though his is not 
the earliest vernal voice. The pushing daffo- 
dils of the perennial flower-border speak to 
me of spring, the choir of the toads and hy- 
lodes announces it even more emphatically. 
How we should miss the voice of Chant- 
icleer were the domestic fowl to become 
silent ! It never occurred to me how im- 
portant a role he plays until the author of 
The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter makes 
him serve as a matutinal alarm to Schau- 
nard in lieu ot the time-piece he has 
pawned. And Herrick, too, in His Grange, 
or Private Wealth, has the domestic fowl 
serve a similar purpose: 

Though clock 
To tell how night draws hence, I've none, 

A cock 
1 have to sing how day draws on. 



138 The Story of my House. 

We might rise and retire, indeed, with the 
clock of the cock, and at all times of day 
and at all seasons we would sadly miss his 
voice were he subject to laryngeal troubles. 
It is a cheery and companionable sound, 
the absence of which would cause an ap- 
preciable void. Many sounds not strictly 
belonging to outward Nature become com- 
plementary to her through familiarity, or 
through the surroundings amid which they 
are heard. Thus the hills and valleys 
speak through the roar of the railroad train, 
and the harvest fields find a fitting tongue 
in the thrashing machine. A domestic voice 
rather than a voice of Nature, the cock's 
crow is, notwithstanding this, associated 
with Nature and rural scenes. It is more a 
voice of the country and a pulsation of the 
rural landscape than an expression of urban 
surroundings. The city hems it in; the 
country expands it. Orpheus might pause 
to listen to it when sounded from an autumnal 
upland, it is so resonant and sonorous. So 
much does the scene, or the conditions 
amid which sounds are uttered, affect the 
sounds themselves. 

As a purely wild sound of Nature — the 
Nature of our own woods and fields — the 
cry of the owl is, perhaps, unrivaled. The 
bark of the fox has some analogy to it in 
point of wildness, except that his voice is 
always further removed. I hear it on 



My Study Windows. 139 

moonlight winter nights following the un- 
dulations of the wooded hills — a short sharp 
bark thrice repeated at rather prolonged in- 
tervals. It is an eerie sound, the cry of 
the vulpine freebooter, ranging his native 
woods through the frosty winter nights. I 
never look up at the fox's pelt slung across 
the portiere-rod in the smoking-room with- 
out a feeling of regret for the lissom life that 
was slain. The grand brush that steadied 
him in his flight; the sharp pointed nose, 
once alive to every atom of the atmosphere; 
the fine soft fur, beautiful still in death, 
appeal mutely to me for a life wantonly 
sacrificed. I care not how many grouse 
and ground-birds may have fallen victims to 
his cunning — they were his rightful prey, 
the spoil of his domain. 

The drumming of the ruffed-grouse im- 
parts a sense of life and companionship to 
the woods such as few other sounds con- 
vey. Bonasa umbella ! there is a whir of 
vigor in his very name. Every one should 
be born a sportsman to appreciate his glori- 
ous crescendo^ hunting is given to man of 
the gods, Xenophon rightly said. The 
grouse is the woodland guide, the alcaid 
who holds the keys to all its guarded re- 
cesses, the courier who knows every lane 
and passage that thread the forest depths. 
Accept his invitation, and you are conducted 
into hidden nooks, and presented glimpses 



140 The Story of my House. 

of sylvan beauty of whose existence you 
would otherwise never have dreamed. His 
roll-call is a stimulus to exercise, an excuse 
to explore the covers. Onward and on- 
ward and still onward he leads ; now amid 
a sun-flecked vista of tree-trunks, now 
through a thicket of intertwining saplings, 
now to a woodland antechamber frescoed 
with October colors, now up some lofty 
hillside overlooking the enchanting valley. 
A taste of the bitter he also mixes with the 
sweet, as when flushed for the third or 
fourth time, weary of pursuit, he leads to 
an almost impenetrable thicket of bramble, 
perchance to skim off unseen on hearing 
your approach, or to dive deep down into a 
precipitous glen, only to mislead by sud- 
denly wheeling up the hillside in a long 
deceptive flight. Most noticeably in the 
spring, and frequently in the autumn, and 
on tempered winter days do I hear the mu- 
sic of his wings, far away in some seques- 
tered glade, beating a sylvan tattoo — most 
picturesque of all woodland sounds ; it is as 
if the woods themselves were speaking. 

The squirrel's bark is emphatically a syl- 
van expression. He knows its effect upon 
the listener, and selects a bland, sunshiny 
day when he may be distinctly heard. But 
only at a safe distance, for has not the fox 
taught him caution, and the grouse the 
wile of placing a tree-trunk between him- 



My Study Windows. 141 

self and the double barrel ? Were I to 
analyze the sentiment of the squirrel's bark, 
I should term it an utterance of derision. 
Not altogether derision, however; for be- 
sides a snarling tone, it has a perceptible 
sound of cracking and crunching, as of nuts 
and acorns being husked and split by a ro- 
dent's tooth. 

A weird cry is the "ssh-p! ssh-p!" of 
the twisting snipe — two fifths a whistle, 
two fifths a cry, while to the nervous 
sportsman the other fifth is a jeer. A gut- 
tural cry, a strange raucous cry, a very 
voice of the treacherous ooze and the rus- 
tling sedge. It can not be put into words, 
and only the snipe himself can sound it. 
Most voices of the marsh are characteristic; 
it has its distinctive gamut of sound. The 
cheerful music of the woodlands is want- 
ing; its speech is pitched in a graver key, 
in keeping with its solitary haunts where 
Syrinx ever murmurs through her murmur- 
ing reeds. How expressive its many- 
sounding tongues — the boom of the bit- 
tern, the harsh quack of the heron, the 
scream of hawk and kildeer, the multitudi- 
nous calls of water birds — 

cries that might 
Be echoes of a water-spirit's song. 

All through the spring and autumn nights 
countless wings are cleaving the upper air, 



142 The Story of my House. 

bearing the hurrying voyagers in search of 
distant climes — flocks of plover and wood- 
cock, skeins of snipe and shore -birds, 
throngs of ducks and geese, voicing their 
way through the darkness, league after 
league, hour after hour on their long jour- 
ney of migration. 

I look for drought and heat when the 
cicada shrills. The rhythm of the cricket's 
creak tells me if the night be hot or cold. 
I see the gathering rain-clouds when the 
tree-toad croaks and the hair-bird trills. 
The bluebird warbles, "it is spring"; a 
thousand throats proclaim the summer. 
Sounds from the woods, sounds from the 
waters, sounds from the fields, sounds from 
the air! The infinite beauty of sound! Are 
not Nature's voices one of her most endear- 
ing charms ? 

How the gas-burner and window-pane 
have led me to digress ! But even from my 
comfortable room it is sometimes pleasant 
to look out beyond the storm and bask in 
the luminousness of the primrose band. 




VIII. 

MY INDOOR GARDEN. 

^Tell, if thou canst, and truly, whence doth come 
This camphire, storax, spikenard, galbanum ; 
These musks, these ambers, and those other smells 
Sweet as the vestry of the oracles. 

Hesperides. 

contrasted with the bleakness 
without, the greenhouses and 
conservatory possess an addition- 
al charm. Within their walls of 
glass reigns a luxuriance of leaf 
and bloom. Like the garden, however, the 
greenhouse will not care for itself. Many 
of the requirements necessary out of doors 
I find imperative within. And yet cultiva- 
tion is on an entirely different scale, a mere 
pot of earth taking the place of barrowfuls 
under out-of-door culture. In the garden 
I simply place a plant at the requisite depth 
and in the proper exposure and soil ; in the 
greenhouse a finer discrimination is called 
for. 

This small plant, bulb, or fern may not 




144 The Story of my House. 

be plunged indiscriminately into any recep- 
tacle. I must measure the size and require- 
ments of the plant ; and not only place it in 
congenial soil, light or shade, but measure 
its needs with regard to the size of its pro- 
spective domicile. My small plants will 
fail with too much nourishment, my large 
plants pine with too little. Some will not 
thrive in soil at all, but must be cultivated 
on a block of wood, sustaining themselves 
merely on air and moisture. In the garden 
each plant draws from the largess of the 
earth just what properties it needs for 
growth and development, and the deeper 
the surface soil the better the plant will 
thrive. From some standpoints my green- 
houses possess an advantage over my gar- 
den ; in another sense the garden is more 
satisfactory. The one is artificial, the other 
natural; but the greenhouse is, possibly, 
more easily controlled. With proper care 
and intelligence I can count upon certain 
fixed results. I am not dependent upon 
the uncertain watering-pot of the sky, and 
have nothing to fear from frost or violent 
winds. But I must needs exert a keener 
watchfulness over my charges; Nature is 
no longer the warder, just so much heat, 
so much air, so much sun, so much moist- 
ure they must have. For tender exotics, 
born of a milder clime, are among my nurs- 
lings. 



My Indoor Garden. 145 

My orchids, for instance. Some occur 
naturally on damp rocks in a cool atmos- 
phere ; others on trees in dense tropical 
forests ; still others on high elevations 
where they receive much sunlight. Shade 
or coolness, which certain species demand, 
are injurious to others which flourish in 
warmth and sunshine. The different habi- 
tats of the species, therefore, must be care- 
fully studied, and the conditions under 
which they thrive in nature imitated as far 
as possible under glass. " A juggler," says 
the accomplished curator of the Trinity Col- 
lege Botanic Gardens, "not unfrequently 
keeps four balls flying over his head with 
one hand, and the successful orchid-grower 
has to deal quite as closely with heat, air, 
light, and moisture." My greenhouse, ac- 
cordingly, calls for its parlor and bath-room, 
its smoking-room and refrigerator. 

I miss the breadth and sunlight of the 
garden ; I gain immunity from the caprice 
of the elements. My glass house bridges 
over the dreary interval between the last 
wind-flower of autumn and the first prim- 
rose of spring. If I can not go to the tropics, 
if I can not have the summer, I can at least 
recall the one and counterfeit the other. 
Could I control the sunlight and inclose a 
sufficient space, I should scarcely miss my 
hardy flower borders. 

In the greenhouse I have my charges 



146 The Story of my House. 

nearer my eye; I can watch their develop- 
ment closer. Many of the insect pests that in- 
fest the garden come to prey upon the plants 
indoors. The same warfare I wage with- 
out, I must wage within. Care and atten- 
tion are ever the price of the flower. The 
insects continue to multiply. They develop 
new races and people new countries. No 
sooner does one scourge become extinct 
than a dozen others take its place. For the 
weevil we have the army-worm, the po- 
tato-bug, the apple-tree borer, the codling- 
moth. I no sooner administer a soporific to 
the red spider than the aphides are at work, 
and these are scarcely subjugated ere the 
mealy-bug appears. Cockroaches bite the or- 
chid roots, mice nibble the young shoots of 
the carnations. Mildew and blight likewise 
destroy, and snails emerge from unsuspected 
places to prey upon the succulent leaves. 

My greenhouse gives me a bog-garden 
which the altitude of the grounds precludes 
without. My tank is a miniature bayou, a 
cage for aquatics. It is always pleasant to 
watch the growth of water plants, they 
seem so appreciative of their bath ; the very 
fact of their growing from the water gives 
them a distinct individuality. These clumps 
of Egyptian papyrus and smaller variegated 
Cyperus, emerging from the ooze, are as 
beautiful as flowers. One of the easiest of 
aquatics to grow, the papyrus, or great 



My Indoor Garden. 147 

paper-reed, throws out strong runners be- 
neath the water, forming dense tufts of tall 
culms, crowned with large handsome um- 
bellate panicles ; indeed, it spreads so rap- 
idly that it requires to be kept vigorously in 
check. The handsome variegated Cyperus 
has a tendency to revert to the type, but 
this may be prevented by cutting out the 
green shoots that appear. 

The great water-lilies, too — the Nymph- 
ceas and Nelumbiums — are among the most 
accommodating plants for water culture, as 
they are unquestionably among the most 
beautiful of flowers. Equally handsome 
and fragrant, many of the species rival the 
terrestrial lilies, and are far less fastidious. 
Few, if any, of the species are more beauti- 
ful than the common water-lily (Nymphcea 
odorata), the white and perfumed cup that 
floats upon our ponds and sluggish streams. 
From my tank I may pluck its blossom 
without being mired, though I miss the 
kingfisher's clarion and the sheen of the 
dragon-fly's wings with which I associate 
it in Nature. I miss also the flapping of its 
pads when touched by the wind, showing 
the red under sides of the shields, lovely as 
the flash of trout that lurk beneath. Long 
must I search for a more delicious odor than 
that contained within its waxen folds. Be- 
gotten of the ooze, a stern shoots upward 
to the sun and air to unfold its chalice on 
10 



148 The Story of my House. 

some secluded pool. The first white water- 
lily, cradled on the water's rippling breast! 
it is the floral embodiment of summer. It 
falls upon the sight like the tinkle of a wood- 
land rill upon the ear, imparting its harmony 
to the mind, a thing to be carried away and 
perfume the memory. I would willingly 
exchange the Zanzibar species for it, if 
thereby I might cause the white lily to bloom 
in winter. 

For winter blossoming the former are 
invaluable aquatics, with pink-purple and 
blue flowers respectively, opening during 
daylight. The deliciously scented pink- 
purple variety (N. Zanzibar ensis rosea) , 
almost an evergreen aquatic, is the strong- 
est grower, its flat leaves also being large 
and of great substance. The night-bloom- 
ing Nelumbiums, N. Devoniensis, rubra, 
and dentata, with pink, red, and white 
flowers respectively, are the best of their 
division. N. speciosum, the sacred lotus 
of the Nile, is a beautiful summer-flower- 
ing species with immense pink flowers; N. 
luteum is the tall-growing yellow water- 
lily, its blossoms j seven to ten inches in 
diameter. Balzacl in Le Lis dans la Val- 
lee, associates the lotus with the old Hel- 
lenic sentiment, eixcept that instead of the 
word country he substitutes love : 

Cueillons la fleur du Nenuphar 
Qui fait oublier les amours, 



My Indoor Garden. 149 

the Nenuphar being the lotus of France, 
Nymphcea alba major. And those of us 
who do not know the lotus of the classics 
are all familiar with the lotus of Tennyson, 
"that enchanted stem" which whosoever 
did receive and taste, forthwith obtained 
rest and dreamful ease. 

There exists some doubt, however, as 
to which lotus the old Greeks really re- 
ferred to. The question, What was "lo- 
tus " ? has been discussed intermittently for 
at least two thousand years. We must 
bear in mind that "lotus" was a term ap- 
plied by the Greeks to several plants or 
trees. The Latin poets, and Pliny very 
likely, used the term more vaguely still, not 
being botanists as were some of the Greeks. 
For there is also the date-plum (Diospyrus 
lotus), a deciduous tree native of the coasts 
of the Caspian Sea, and cultivated and 
naturalized in Southern Europe, the fruit of 
which is edible. This has been held by 
some to be the lotus of the Lotophagi, or 
lotus-eaters. Besides, there is the prickly 
lotus shrub or jujube tree (Zi^yphus lotus), 
indigenous to the Libyan district and por- 
tions of Asia, to the sweet and odorous 
fruit of which has been equally ascribed the 
power of causing one to forget one's home. 
It is still eaten by the natives, and a wine 
or mead is extracted from its juice. The 
term lotus was also applied to several spe- 



1 50 The Story of my House. 

cies of water-lily — the Egyptian water-lily 
{Nymphcea lotus), the blue water-lily (N 
ccerulea), and more particularly to the Ne- 
lumbium of the Nile {Nelumbium speciosum). 
The Nelumbium is a native both of India 
and Egypt, though almost extinct in the 
latter country now ; and in the ancient Hin- 
doo and Egyptian mythological representa- 
tions of Nature, as is well known, it was 
the emblem of the great generative and 
conceptive powers of the world, serving as 
the head-dress of the Sphinxes and the or- 
nament of Isis. It was known, moreover, 
as the Egyptian bean, on account of its 
fruit, the cells of which contained a kind of 
bean employed as an article of food. In- 
digenous to China as well, the roots are still 
served there in summer with ice, and laid 
up with vinegar and salt for winter. Both 
the fruit and the root of Nymphcea lotus 
were likewise eaten by the ancient Egyp- 
tians; while Horus, the divine child who 
personified the rising sun, is always repre- 
sented in hieroglyphics as emerging from a 
water-lotus bud. 

In the East, a belief in a divinity residing 
in the lotus has existed from the most an- 
cient times, worship of this divinity of the 
lotus being the dominant religion in Thibet 
at the present day. The daily and hourly 
prayer, Wilson states in the Abode of Snow, 
is still, ** Om mani padme, haun, J ' or literal- 



My Indoor Garden. 



ly rendered, " O God ! the jewel in the lotus. 
Amen." In Cashmere the roots of the wa- 
ter-lotus are pulled up from the mire and 
employed as an article of diet. The root is 
sweet, and was formerly used for making 
an intoxicating beverage, as the sap of the 
palm is still employed in some localities. 
In like manner the roots of the yellow lotus 
were used by the American aborigines as 
an article of diet, Nuttall recording that, 
boiled when fully ripe, they become as 
farinaceous, agreeable, and wholesome as 
the potato. 

Research tends to show that it is the Zi- 
lyphus rather than any of the other species 
of lotus to which Homer and Theophrastus 
ascribed the power of causing forgetfulness. 
Theophrastus and Dioscorides, Greek botan- 
ists, both describe different kinds of lotus, 
but their descriptions are not always trust- 
worthy. Homer mentions yet another 
lotus, supposed to be Melilotus officinalis, 
the yellow variety of sweet clover common 
to this country where it has become nat- 
uralized from Europe. It was this plant 
which he describes as nourishing the steeds 
of Achilles. Authorities differ so greatly, 
however, that it is difficult to decide with 
absolute certainty which species of lotus is 
really the fabled plant of the Greeks, though 
the weight of opinion would point to the 
Zi^yphus as against the Diospyrus and 



152 The Story of my House. 

especially the Nelumbium. The poetical 
folk-lore of plants must not be expected to 
be literally true. Even the observant Greek, 
Aristotle, has many absurdities about plants. 
So has Theophrastus, but Pliny is full of the 
most ridiculous superstitions, which he re- 
lates with all the seriousness of a firm be- 
liever in them. 

In attempting to place many plants and 
flowers of the ancient classic poets there is, 
therefore, always more or less difficulty and 
uncertainty. To identify the plants men- 
tioned, without studying them in the coun- 
try where those who wrote about them 
lived, is fruitless when there is such a great 
difference of opinion as to what the ancient 
Latin poets mean by "violet" or "hya- 
cinth," or "narcissus." Sibthorp, who 
was Professor of Botany at Oxford, Eng- 
land, about eighty years ago and who was 
a fine classical scholar, went to live three 
years in Greece for the purpose of identify- 
ing the Greek flowers and plants mentioned 
by the classics. He returned with the con- 
clusion that it is impossible to do it satis- 
factorily and he was quite certain, though 
the Greek language still remains in Greece 
very slightly changed, that what the modern 
Greeks call a "hellebore" or a "hyacinth" 
is different from the flowers that were 
called by these names two thousand years 
ago. 



My Indoor Garden. 153 

Herodotus (Book iv, p. 177) places the 
geographical range of the lotus-eaters from 
the recess of the Gulf of Cabes eastward to 
about half-way along the coast of Tripoli, 
which would correspond with Homer's ac- 
count. The former describes the natives as 
living "by eating the fruit of the lotus — 
the fruit about the size of the Pistacia nut, 
and in sweetness like the fruit of the date. 
From this fruit the lotus-eaters made their 
wine." What Homer says regarding the 
lotus is this (Odyssey, Book ix, v. 82, etc.) : 
Ulysses is recounting his adventures to the 
guests of the King of Corfu after dinner. 
He relates how he was on his way home 
from Troy, and was doubling Cape St. An- 
gelo, when a storm from the north met his 
fleet and drove it from its course. After 
sailing southward for nine days, he sighted 
land and made for it, as the fresh-water 
supply was exhausted. The crews enjoyed 
the luxury of a meal on shore, and then be- 
gan to wonder where they were. So 
Ulysses chose two good men, adding a 
herald with a flag of truce, a necessary pre- 
caution in those times when strangers were 
enemies, as a matter of course. These men 
were to inquire who the inhabitants of the 
land were. "The lotus-eaters received 
them kindly and gave them lotus to eat. 
As soon as they eat the honey-sweet fruit 
of the lotus they would not come back to 



154 The Story of my House. 

bring me tidings, nor go away, but wished 
to remain where they were with the lotus- 
eaters, gathering and eating lotus and to 
think no more of going home. They shed 
tears when I dragged them back by force to 
the ships and tied them by ropes to the 
benches in the hold. Then I ordered the 
rest of the crews to go on board at once, 
for fear any of them should eat lotus and 
think no more of going home." 

To believe that the Homeric legend re- 
ferred to the fruit of the jujube-tree does not 
necessitate our believing that the fruit had 
a sedative effect upon those who eat it. 
Rumors of a people leading a lazy and indo- 
lent life in a delightful climate and subsist- 
ing on the fruit of trees, and rumors that 
sailors accidentally landing there had given 
up the dangers and hard work of a seafar- 
ing life and deserted, would be enough to 
give the foundation of the legend. There 
is a story entitled The Mutiny of the Boun- 
ty, a true history, which gave the founda- 
tion of Byron's tale The Island ; and there 
are many points of similarity between this 
and Homer's brief tale; but Ulysses, the 
man of many resources, proved a better 
match for his mutinous men than did Cap- 
tain Bligh. 

Tennyson's lotus "laden with flower 
and fruit," which is specified as being 
borne on "branches," is evidently the Zi- 



My In door Garden. 155 

typhus or else the Diospyrus ; although 
the line — 

The lotus blows by every winding creek 

might lead one to suppose he referred to 
the Nelumbium, were it not for the former 
contradictory line and the fact that the wa- 
ter-lily grows in the water itself. At any 
rate, sufficient authority exists to render it 
certain that some species of lotus yielding 
an intoxicating product was regarded sacred 
because of an indwelling god. But what- 
ever species was really referred to by the 
classics as the charmed nepenthe — whether 
the fruit of the jujube-tree, or merely a 
fruit of the fabled garden of Hesperides, to 
us the name lotus at once brings up the 
gorgeous water-lily that once rocked upon 
the Nile, with its grand pink blossoms and 
its great green leaves. The Nelumbium has 
taken kindly to American soil, having in- 
creased in several marshy localities in New 
Jersey with astonishing rapidity, entirely 
crowding out the native growths of arrow- 
head, pickerel weed, and horsetail, where 
it has been placed and become established. 
With its great tendency to spread and mul- 
tiply, it will soon supply the dragon-fly a 
classic flower to rest upon, and the great 
green frog a still more spacious paludal 
throne than that hitherto supplied by the 
shield of the native water-lily. 



1 56 The Story of my House. 

Suspended above the tank are numerous 
large plants of Lcelia anceps and L. a. mo- 
rada, leaning their long lavender sprays 
over the pool, like flocks of hovering but- 
terflies. With them are also suspended 
large specimens of the staghorn and the 
hare'sfoot ferns. Ferns and orchids invari- 
ably look well in combination. Palms be- 
ing somewhat stiff themselves, do not as- 
sociate so well with orchids, which need 
the relief of more graceful foliage. The 
hare'sfoot fern is appropriately named, the 
innumerable twisting rhizomes being soft 
and woolly, like the foot of a hare, and the 
fronds fine and feathery. Of all the Lcelias, 
L. a. morada has the longest stems, and is 
among the largest and finest flowered. I 
grant the exquisite beauty and fragrance of 
the white form. Comparatively an inex- 
pensive variety, the former is to be preferred 
to some others quoted at from ten to twenty 
times its marketable value. For in orchids, 
price very frequently does not represent in- 
trinsic beauty of bloom ; and mere rarefies 
or orchidaceous curiosities are preferable in 
one's neighbor's collection. I am satisfied 
with fine specimens of a few of the easier 
grown and really beautiful species and va- 
rieties. A fine plant of Cypripedium oenan- 
thum which my neighbor values at a thou- 
sand dollars is not worth my Lcelia to me. 
Its flower is stiff in comparison, and its dor- 



My Indoor Garden. 157 

sal sepal, though strikingly rayed — white, 
striped with pink — has not the grace and 
beauty of the Lcelia's velvety petals and the 
exquisite blossoms of many other species. 
After all, may it not well be questioned 
whether the hardy pink lady-slipper has a 
rival among the numerous species and hy- 
brids of the big labellums and long-tailed 
petals ? 

My orchids, like my roses, have their 
parasites — the green and yellow, fly, the 
black thrip, the mealy-bug, the lesser snail, 
the scale. Of late years the yellow fly has 
become more numerous, though, with the 
green fly, the rose is his especial prey. It 
is difficult to know what plan to adopt 
against my insect enemies. The rule of 
three will not solve the difficulty, for a 
mean proportional does not exist. If my 
houses are too hot or the plants too dry, 
the red spider and black thrip swarm; if 
too cold, the mildew comes ; if the weather 
be muggy, it is a summons for the green 
and yellow fly. Tobacco stems placed 
upon the hot-water pipes banish the black 
thrip where fumigating is of no avail. Fu- 
migating alone will disperse the aphides. 
The smaller snail I must bate with lettuce 
leaves ; the larger one must be searched for 
at night with a lantern. For mildew I 
must place sulphur and lime on the pipes, 
and the scale and mealy-bug demand their 



1 58 The Story of my House. 

periodical sponge -bath. The cockroach 
sips treacle and is lost in the sweets. 
Wood - lice come from underneath the 
benches, and the lesser snail, despite all 
precautions, will sometimes bite off a flow- 
er-spike six times larger than himself. It 
all reminds me of a passage in the Faerie 
Queen: 

A cloud of cumbrous gnats do him molest, 

All striving to infixe their feeble stinges, 

That from their noyance he no where can rest; 

But with his clownish hands their tender wings 

He brusheth oft, and oft doth mar their murmurings. 

Care and attention are ever the price of the 
flower. 

It is hardly to be wondered at that or- 
chids have their insects ; the wonder is they 
do not possess them in greater numbers, 
the flowers themselves so resemble insects 
and strange creatures of the air. I can 
scarcely define which attracts me most, the 
singular flowers or the fantastic odors they 
exhale. Perfumes of lilacs and primroses — 
lilacs and primroses thrice intensified — greet 
me when Oncidium incurvum and Dendro- 
bium heterocarpum are in bloom. The 
redolence of jasmines, jonquils, and cycla- 
mens is combined in many of the Cattleyas, 
while Odontoglossum gloriosum seems a 
whole hawthorn hedge in flower. I open 
the door of the warm-house when the Van- 
das are in bloom, and I know not what 



My Indoor Garden. 159 

subtle overpowering fragrance weighs 
down the air. What a sachet and censer 
of perfume ! what a spice-box of the Ori- 
ent ! Cleopatra might have just passed 
through. Such strange odors ! languorous, 
sensuous, all but intoxicating! I expect to 
hear a tom-tom's beat, or the rustle of a 
houri's skirt. Some of the Stanhopeas, 
how powerful their scent — a pot-pourri of 
all the gums of Brazil ! The suave yet pun- 
gent aroma exhaled by one of the Oncidi- 
ums (O. ornithorhynchum), I can never 
get enough of. Its insidious, delicious fra- 
grance defies analysis; it haunts me like an 
unremembered dream or a thought that 
has escaped. Intensely red flowers are 
seldom odorous ; the brilliant Sophronites — 
some of them the purest essence of scarlet 
— are scentless. The Phalcenopsis, too, al- 
though among the most floriferous of or- 
chids, are likewise inodorous. 

It is fascinating to attempt to trace the 
resemblance of some of the odors. G. W. 
Septimus Piesse would be at a loss to place 
many of them or to determine their combi- 
nation. Some, on the contrary, are dis- 
tinctly like many well-known and grateful 
odors, though generally much more pro- 
nounced. From Dendrobium aureum and 
Cattleya gigas there rises a triple extract of 
violets ; from Cattleya citrina, a strong fra- 
grance ofjlimes; from D. scabrilingue, a 



160 The Story of my House. 

delicious breath of wall-flowers; from D. 
moschatum, a pronounced musk-like scent. 
Besides Odontoglossum gloriosum, both 
Burlingtonia fragrans and Trichopilia 
suavis emit a perfume of hawthorn. One 
of the Zygopetalums smells like hya- 
cinths, one of the Oncidiums like cinna- 
mon, one of the Catasetums like anise. 
The straw-colored flowers of C. scurra 
have a pronounced perfume of lemons. 
Cymbidium Mastersii is charged with the 
odor of almonds. Dendrobium incurvum 
is distinctly jasmine scented. A mellif- 
luous essence of cyclamen clusters about 
D. Dominianum. Not a few orchids smell 
like honey, while in others I can plain- 
ly trace the scent of elder flower, helio- 
trope, the wild grape, sweet pea, vanilla, 
tuberose, honeysuckle, lily of the valley, 
and various tropical fruits, like the pine-ap- 
ple, banana, and Monstera. The majority 
of the J/andas and Stanhopeas, and not a 
few of the Cattleyas, are puzzling to place. 
Form is scarcely less strange than odor 
in many orchids, most of the species bear- 
ing a pronounced or faint resemblance to 
some form of bird, insect, or animal life. 
The Masdevallias and Maxillarias, how 
like the walking-stick and water-skaters 
many of them are! My primrose-scented 
Dendrobium looks like a flock of lovely 
buff- colored moths ready to take flight 



My Indoor Garden. 



from the stems. The ivory-white flowers 
of Angr cecum sesquipidale, whose perfume 
so strongly resembles that of the white gar- 
den lily, look like a starfish. These Stan- 
hopeas, whose emanations are almost over- 
powering and whose spikes emerge from 
the bottom of their suspended baskets, re- 
mind me of serpents in the form and spots 
of their fleshy, purplish or orange-dyed 
flowers. The flowers of the species Angu- 
loa resemble a bull's head ; those of Cycno- 
ches Loddigesii, a swan. In the white 
waxen flower of Peresteria data I trace the 
symbol of immortality — a dove with ex- 
panded wings; in the terrestrial Ophrys I 
almost hear the humming of its bees. Many 
species closely resemble spiders and beetles ; 
others seem almost an exact counterfeit of 
various moths and butterflies — there is no 
end to the strange resemblances. 

Color is scarcely less strange than odor 
and form. These abnormal spots and 
blotches, these oddly tipped petals and 
painted sepals, I meet in no other flower. 
The lily, Sternbergia, and anemone have 
each been singled out as the candidate for 
the honor of being referred to in the twen- 
ty-ninth verse of the sixth chapter of St. 
Matthew. But was any one of these, or even 
Solomon himself arrayed like Dendrobium 
Wardianum ? The most gorgeous of its 
gorgeous tribe, it is perhaps the most gor- 



1 62 The Story of my House. 

geous of flowers; and among the easiest 
grown species, it blossoms freely, suspend- 
ed in the library from a block of wood. 

I must watch long to see a blue or pur- 
ple orchid in bloom, colors common enough 
among garden and other greenhouse flow- 
ers. True red and vermilion are extreme- 
ly rare, yellow in its various shades being 
perhaps the most common color, green and 
white occupying an almost equal place. 
Brown-shaded or brown-spotted flowers 
are common, and there exist numerous 
pink-purples and crimsons. Magenta fre- 
quently creeps into the Cattleyas, staining 
the crest of the pearl or cream-colored lobe, 
or splashing the curled or fimbriated lip. But 
magenta lends itself better to orchids than 
to other flowers; and objectionable as it 
generally is, it may be pardoned in some of 
the Cattleyas. It is a tropical color and 
brings perfume. Apart from the strange 
odors, shapes, and colors of the flowers, the 
orchid still continues exceptional in the 
wonderful duration of its blooms both upon 
the plant and in the cut stage. Epiphytal or 
terrestrial, tropical or native, in all its as- 
pects the orchid is strange. 

How few, while admiring the gorgeous 
beauty of an epiphytal orchid, think of the 
price it has cost to transfer it from its tropi- 
cal habitat ! For very many of the numer- 
ous species have been obtained at the sacri- 



My Indoor Garden. 163 

fice of human lives — martyrs to hardship, 
exposure, and disease engendered while 
wresting a new species from its miasma- 
infested home. The accounts of many 
orchid collectors who have lived to relate 
their experiences read like the exploits of a 
Stanley or a tale of Verne. 

If my orchids are chary of red, many 
foliage plants supply this color abundantly, 
and ferns the graceful leafage and lovely 
greens which orchids lack. I say nothing 
of the palm, the tree-fern, the Monster a, the 
Musa, and similar large plants that require 
special quarters where they may have am- 
ple space to do them justice. But color and 
form are supplied by many medium-sized 
foliage plants of comparatively easy culture ; 
and in selecting these, like orchids, it is 
well to choose a few of the finest and most 
distinct, rather than crowd the stages with 
a mass of plants of only average merit. 
One can never cease to admire the brilliant 
mottling and veining of the Croton's ever- 
green foliage, the grand purplish green 
leaves of Maranta Zebrina, the elegant 
markings of the Calladium, the velvety 
crimson-mottled leaves of the Gesneras, the 
polished bronze shields of Alocassia metal- 
lica, the bronze-green and satiny luster of 
the Camphylobtrys, the vivid exquisite red 
tones of the Draccena's younger leafage, and 
the Poinsettia's fiery scarlet whorls. Per- 
il 



164 The Story of my House. 

haps no other red, even that of the pome- 
granate, is quite so intense as the flaming 
spathe and spadix of several of the great 
tropical aroids belonging to the species 
Anthurium, valuable for their fine foliage as 
well as for their startling flowers. An in- 
teresting foliage plant is the old Strelitqia 
regince, producing singular brilliant orange 
and purple flowers, one continually push- 
ing up beneath the other from its magical 
wand. The Imatophylhim, or Clivia, is 
likewise a satisfactory foliage plant, apart 
from the showy florescence of its large 
umbel of twelve to fifteen coppery-red blos- 
soms. 

The variegated form of the pine-apple 
(Ananas bracteatus) goes farther than any 
other greenhouse plant in its combined 
appeal to the senses, its rich reddish foliage 
pleasing the eye, and its rich red fruit cap- 
tivating the sense of sight, smell, and taste. 
I fancy the smaller fruit of this variety is of 
more pronounced flavor than that of the 
type; but this may be simply owing to its 
more inviting appearance. One needs no 
other odor in the greenhouse when the 
pine-apple is in fruit. It was a Huguenot 
priest who described the pine-apple, three 
centuries ago, as a gift of such excellence 
that only the hand of Venus should gather 
it. It might have fallen from the sky a 
larger and more delicious strawberry. No 



My Indoor Garden. 165 

one who has tasted it only after it has been 
plucked green and subjected to a long voy- 
age in the hold of a vessel, can conceive its 
ambrosial flavor when cut ripe from the 
stem. It is a fresh revelation to the taste ; it 
almost renews one's youth. 

Some specimens of the Sarracenias or 
pitcher-plants are interesting, though when 
suspended from their baskets they lack 
their native grace. I always recall the Sar- 
racenia as I first met it, its purple cups and 
rufous-green leaves fringing a deep black 
pool. Springing from the sphagnum, cot- 
ton-rose, and cranberry tangle of the 
swamp, it seemed to possess a conscious 
life of freshness and of color, callous to No- 
vember frost and cold. The thick carpet of 
cranberry upheld the footstep on the quak- 
ing bog, and every tread spilled the water 
from the Sarracenia 's brimming cups and 
leaves. Aflame with scarlet berries, a 
growth of black-alder skirted the outer 
edges of the pool; on the rising ground be- 
yond, the gray boles and gilded foliage of a 
beech grove were illumined by the sinking 
sun. It was a study for a Ruysdael or a 
Diaz, if a Diaz could reproduce the mellow 
grays and reds of the sphagnum and the 
Sarracenia. Fontainebleau or the thickets 
of Bas-Breau hold no such pool ; it is alone 
the product of a wild New World swamp. 

Of flowers grown for the sake of fra- 



1 66 The Story of my House. 

grance alone, or beauty of blossom and fra- 
grance combined, it is difficult to specify 
which are the most desirable— so many are 
so beautiful. Such stiff, soulless subjects 
as the camellia and calla are worthless, and 
should be thrown out of the greenhouse — 
there are too many good things to take 
their place. A flower should have a mean- 
ing, or a sentiment attached to it ; and the 
camellia and calla have none ; they are frigid 
even for the grave. Many of the glaring 
blues, purples, crimsons, and magentas of the 
Cinerarias, and some of the agonizing reds 
of the Chinese primrose are equally to be 
avoided as so much rubbish for which the 
greenhouse has no room. The common 
pink begonia, which every one grows be- 
cause every one else grows it, should like- 
wise be left out in favor of many other 
better varieties of its class. Of roses there 
can not well be too many ; and of these a 
well-grown Marechal Niel" or a Gloire de 
Dijon can scarcely be excelled for luxuri- 
ance, fragrance, and beauty of bloom. 

I should hesitate which to pronounce 
the most satisfactory — the cyclamen or the 
lily of the valley, both are so sweet. The 
latter is much more easily raised; the for- 
mer must be sowed from seed yearly; it 
does not propagate. The fragrance of the 
cyclamen is delicious and distinct. But it is 
of a variable quantity, some kinds being 



My Indoor Garden. 167 

delightfully scented, and some odorless. 
Marie Louise violets — 

The violet of March that comes with spring, 

should, of course, be generously grown in 
frames connected with the greenhouse, to 
cut from ad libitum ; there is no other in- 
door or outdoor flower to take the place of 
the violet. Neither can the carnation be 
dispensed with, this colored clove among 
flowers, which only demands a cool tem- 
perature to repay cultivation. And how 
could one be without the haunting fra- 
grance of mignonette ! 

Tulips, hyacinths, and crocus, methinks, 
should not be raised indoors — their true 
place is in the April garden without, to 
herald the returning spring. A few of the 
white, salmon, and vermilion geraniums 
are showy and sometimes useful, especially 
the small double vermilion; the majority 
do not compare with many of the fine dis- 
carded pelargoniums which florists com- 
plain they can not sell, for the simple reason 
that they do not raise them. The fuchsia 
has some fine and striking forms ; the ma- 
jority are undesirable. The heliotrope is 
desirable for its fragrance, though it withers 
quickly when cut. The Freesia is an easily 
grown and beautiful flower that should be 
forced as abundantly as the Convallaria for 
cutting. Daphne Indica and odora one can 



168 The Story of* my House. 

not well do without, and equally valuable 
for fragrance are the climbing Madagascar 
Stephanotis and some of the jasmines. 

Among other desirable climbers possess- 
ing fragrance should be included some of 
the passion flowers and the showy yellow 
Brazilian Allamanda. A few specimen 
plants of the fragrant Chinese azalea are 
always ornamental, and useful for cutting ; 
some of the rose-colored kinds are among 
the gayest of greenhouse flowers, notably the 
old variety ' ' Rosette. " A somewhat difficult 
hot-house plant to grow is Alstroemeria 
ligtu, with white and scarlet flowers appear- 
ing during February, and possessing a strong 
scent of mignonette. The pure waxy white 
flowers of the Eucharis, or lily of the Ama- 
zon, are invaluable for cutting, the robust 
bulbous plants being easily raised, and pro- 
ducing their flower-trusses in great luxuri- 
ance. For cutting, the numerous species of 
narcissus can scarcely be equaled ; from the 
many beautiful bunch-flowered varieties of 
the ta^elta, and the glorious blooms of the 
large trumpeters, to the smaller hoop-petti- 
coat daffodil and golden campernelle jon- 
quil. A plant seldom seen under glass, but 
an excellent plant, notwithstanding, is the 
common sweet-scented yellow day lily (He- 
merocallis flava), than which few flowers 
are more beautiful either in the garden 
or greenhouse. Where one has sufficient 



My Indoor Garden. 169 

space, the garden lilac may be advantage- 
ously grown in the greenhouse, care being 
taken not to force it too fast, or the trusses 
soon droop when cut. 

Naturally, no greenhouse is complete 
without the chrysanthemum, which, defying 
the first frosts without, makes us forget the 
approach of winter within. I still grow the 
old-fashioned small-flowered white, yellow, 
and maroon pompons. Of recent years 
hybridizing has produced an innumerable 
quantity of large, loose outre forms among the 
Chinese and Japanese sections. In many 
cases this has been done at the sacrifice of 
bloom and beauty of color. Dingy brown 
disks have crept into the flowers ; and the 
chrysanthemum may be said to have de- 
teriorated rather than improved under too 
much cultivation. 




IX. 



A BLUE-VIOLET SALAD. 




Ce fut un beau souper, ruisselant de surprises. 
Les rotis, cuits a point, n'arriverent pas froids: 
Par ce beau soir d'hiver, on avait des cerises 
Et du Johannisberg, ainsi que chez les rois. 
Theodore de Banville, Odes Funambulesques. 

he dining-room is large and lofty, 
having been planned with spe- 
cial reference to ventilation, spa- 
ciousness, and the attractive 
views it commands of the copse, 
the garden, and the rising and the setting 
sun. 

If it is pleasant to dream in the well- 
furnished library, if it is a delight to muse 
and study amid harmonious surroundings, 
how much more important it is that the 
great nursery of a pleasing frame of mind, 
the dining-room, should by its inviting sur- 
roundings and the care and intelligence be- 
stowed upon its adjuncts, the kitchen and 
the wine-cellar, contribute equally to the 
felicity of the house and home ! 



A Blue- Violet Salad. 171 

With the exception of the ball-room, the 
dining-room should be the most spacious 
apartment of the house. For is it not the 
most occupied and visited ? Three times 
daily, at least, the inmates assemble here; 
and in the case of entertainments I observe it 
is invariably a shrine to which the guests 
repair with almost one accord. To be 
sure, the host and hostess are not entirely 
neglected, and the flow of conversation is 
never wholly restrained in the drawing- 
room. Yet I have never failed to notice, 
where a large assemblage of invited guests 
is present in any house, how powerful a 
magnet the dining-room possesses. This 
not only to the sleek and rubicund among 
the sterner sex — men who are known for 
their fondness for good cheer; but even to 
the slim and ethereal among the gentler sex, 
as well. Pale sylphs whom one would 
scarcely suspect capable of an accomplished 
play of a knife and fork, staid matrons, 
blooming rosebuds, and elderly dames, all 
seem no less fascinated with the charms of 
the dining-room. It is the source and dis- 
pensator of joy when its appointments are 
perfect — the one room of all rooms of the 
house which may not be abolished. 

How may I enjoy the other portions of 
my house if the dinner be poorly served 
and the environments amid which it is par- 
taken be dismal or unattractive ? The din- 



172 The Story of my House. 

ner should be the diapason to pitch one in 
the right key for the evening, whether it 
be the perusal of a favorite author, a moon- 
light stroll, a ball, or a symposium with 
one's friends. Carlyle's dining-room, I 
venture to say, was a gloomy one ; or his 
cook, lacking a happy turn for an entree, 
served him with ponderous pieces de resist- 
ance, thereby the more intensifying his 
natural acerbity and want of geniality. Is 
the German invariably happy, overflowing 
with Gemuthlichkeit ? He has three hun- 
dred and sixty-five soups, one for every 
day in the year. Is the Frenchman pro- 
verbially polite and effervescent ? His deli- 
cate ragouts and fragrant Bordeaux are a 
constant tonic to his spirits. "Repose is 
as much the result of a well-organized di- 
gestion as of a quiet mind," observes the 
axiomatic and irrefutable author of the 366 
Menus. Thrice blessed he who has a 
good conscience and a good cook. Your 
conscience may be as clear as a mountain 
brook, however, but without a good diges- 
tion life becomes a weariness. 

A pleasant dining-room and a well-ap- 
pointed kitchen, therefore, become among 
the most important factors in the happiness 
of the household — the best means of defeat- 
ing that ennui which, according to Schopen- 
hauer, fills the moiety of a man's life. The 
Savarins, the La Reynieres, and the Baron 



A Blue- Violet Salad. 173 

Brisses can never be too many. " I regard 
the discovery of a new dish," said the late 
Henrion de Pensey, the magistrate (accord- 
ing to M. Royer Collard), of whom regen- 
erated France has most reason to be proud, 
4 'as a far more interesting event than the 
discovery of a star, for we always have 
stars enough, but we can never have too 
many dishes; and I shall not regard the 
sciences as sufficiently honored or adequate- 
ly represented among us until I see a cook 
in the first class of the Institute." 

They manage these things better in 
France, though the art of gastronomy of 
late years has advanced as rapidly in this 
country, perhaps, as any of its sister arts. 
It is no longer a burden to approach the 
dinner-table; and while we may not have 
transposed the maxim that Harpagon 
deemed so noble, nevertheless, it may be 
affirmed, in the strict sense of the expres- 
sion, that we no longer "eat to live." For 
is not this among the highest of arts — a 
sauce "that, when properly prepared, will 
enable one to eat an elephant ? " as Grimod 
de la Reyniere observes in the Almanach 
des Gourmands. With an abundant sup- 
ply of herbs and flavorings, a hygienic ap- 
preciation of their virtues, and a refined, 
discriminating taste, all is possible. The 
"palate is flattered" and the stomach is 
not fatigued. If the cook or the person 



174 The Story of my House. 

who employs him would only carry out 
the advice the Almanach prescribes, in or- 
der that the cook's palate may retain its ex- 
quisite sensibility, and the trained papillae 
of his tongue forever command their cun- 
ning! 

These fine savors, these subtle aromas 
of a delicious dish, delicate as the fragrance 
of a wild flower, and companions of the 
liquid essences of the Gironde, the Cote 
d'Or, the Marne, and the Rhinegau — when 
conceived and executed by a true priest or 
priestess of the range, how they refresh the 
jaded spirits and turn the lowering winter 
sky into couleur de rose! It remained for 
a woman, the late Mrs. Mary Booth, to give 
to posterity the most delicious epigram that 
has yet been uttered regarding dinners and 
dinner-giving: "A successful dinner is the 
best thing which the world can do in the 
pursuit of pleasure. It is the apotheosis of 
the present, and the present moment is all 
we can call our own." Neither let us for- 
get for a single instant, where dinner-giv- 
ing is concerned, the golden maxim of 
Baron Brisse : "A host whose guest has 
had to ask for anything is a dishonored 
man ! " 

Let the dinner be served in a well-lighted, 
spacious, and pleasantly furnished room ; let 
the chairs be easy, the guests not less than 
eight nor more than ten (les diners fins se 



A Blue- Violet Salad. 175 

font en petit comite), the linen spotless, the 
service faultless. Let the wines not exceed 
four — a light hock, redolent of the fruit of 
the Riesling; a glass or two of Montepul- 
ciano or of Pichon-Longueville, two flutes 
of half dry champagne (cider rather than 
" brut ") or sparkling dry Saint-Peray ; and 
for the after-taste — the last taste of sweets — 
the perfumed sunshine of Sauternes, Lafau- 
rie, or La Tour blanche of a well-succeeded 
year, iced to snow. "A glass of wine," 
Richard Sheridan used to say, ' ' would en- 
courage the bright thought to come; and 
then it was right to take another to reward 
it for coming." Let the courses not ex- 
ceed seven, including the salad ; let the 
room be well ventilated ; the flowers mildly 
stimulating rather than cloying in their fra- 
grance ; let the repast not exceed two and 
a half hours in duration — and, for the pres- 
ent at least, we are — 

Notes in that great symphony 
Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres. 

The senseless practice of decanting wine can 
not be too strongly condemned. A delicate 
wine seems never the same as when poured 
from the bottle in which it has ripened and 
in which it has concentrated its odors. 
The practice, moreover, is incongruous ; for 
even he who decants his "claret" would 
not think of needlessly dissipating the bou- 



176 The Story of my House. 

quet of his hock. As for the matter of sedi- 
ment being avoided by decanting, decanted 
wines are invariably seen in a clouded con- 
dition, their bloom having been brushed 
off by the very process of decanting. By 
laying all bottles on their side, with the 
label uppermost, while they remain in the 
repose of the cellar, and then placing them 
upright a day or a few hours before they 
are required, the question of sediment is at 
once disposed of. Then, if the wine be 
carefully poured, label upward, it wells 
forth as limpid as a woodland spring. 

Equally to be censured is the increasing 
custom of serving wine in colored glasses — 
a fashion inaugurated by the gentler sex in 
order to add a supposititious life to the table. 
Apart from the great mistake of thus mask- 
ing the color of the wine itself, and thereby 
impairing its attractiveness to the eye, there 
is no color produced by the most cunning 
artificer in glass which approaches the col- 
ors extracted from the skin of the grapes 
themselves. 

What green Bohemian glass may equal 
in hue this golden green of Liebfrauenmilch 
that so enhances the flavor of these speckled 
trout which but yesterday were swim- 
ming amid the waving watercresses of the 
stream ? 

Or shall I obliterate the lovely color of 
Bordeaux which, captivating the sense of 



A Blue- Violet Salad. 177 

seeing, thus additionally heightens through 
the imagination the exquisite bouquet and 
flavor of the grand growths of the Medoc ? 
Disguised in an opaque receptacle, how 
may I enjoy the liquid gold of Sauternes or 
the deep violets and purples which dance 
and gleam in a glass of Cote Rotie ? Yet 
more than clear crystal is required in the 
ideal wine-glass. The most delicious nec- 
tar loses half its virtues if drunk from a thick 
glass or a sharp, rough rim, as the foaming 
juice of Champagne is deprived of its great- 
est charm — its bewitching, mantling life — 
when served in the flat tumbler that deadens 
its sparkle and its bead. 

It was not without just reason that Boi- 
Ieau declared : 

On est savant quand on boit bien ; 
Qui ne sait boire ne sait rien. 

Who drinketh well his wisdom shows; 
Who knows not drinking nothing knows. 

And Jean le Houx, in the dedication of 
his sparkling Vaux de Vire — anacreontics 
which are unique in the languages — asserts 
that his best verses were produced by 
drinking good wine, while "inferior wine 
was responsible for the poorest. It would 
be interesting to know what special wines 
inspired the incomparable tribute to his 
nose — 



178 The Story of my House. 

. . . Duquel la couleur richement particippe 
Du rouge et violet, 

or whether it was white or red wine that 
drew forth the frolicsome stanzas addressed 
to Magdaleine. 

Le Houx deserves to be classed among 
the great philosophers. It is to be regret- 
ted, however, that his philosophy did not 
extend to dining as well as wining — though, 
for that matter, the eight little i8mo vol- 
umes of the Almanach des Gourmands,* 
justly classed by Monselet among the great 
forgotten books, leave nothing to be desired 
on the subject of epicurism in its most in- 
finitesimal and far-extending details. The 
humor and verve are exquisite, while La 
Reyniere's style might come under the 
definition of Remy Belleau — " well-coupled 
and properly sewn words, graces and fa- 
vors of a well-chosen subject, and I do not 
know what happy chance (et ne sfay quel 
heur), which truly accompanies those who 
write well." Only, the Almanach is in 
prose. With all due regard for Berchoux 
and his poem in four cantos, La Gastrono- 
mie, the editions of which are almost as 
numerous as the stars in the Milky Way, 
the French genius is yet to appear who 



* Almanach des Gourmands. Servant de Guide 
dans les Moyens de Faire. Excellente Chere; Par un 
Viel Amateur. Troisieme Edition. A Paris 1804-1 81 2. 



A Blue-Violet Salad. 179 

may do full justice in verse to the pleasures 
of the table. 

Le Houx, how fine his touch ! and how 
melodiously he plays upon all the strings 
of the cenologistic harp ! 

I am brave as a Caesar in wars where they fight 
With a glass in the left hand and jug in the right. 
Let me rather be riddled by drinking my fill 
Than by those cruel balls that so suddenly kill ! 

Tis the clashing of bottles to which I incline; 
And the pipes and the rundlets, all full of red wine, 
Are my cannon of siege, which are aimed without fault 
At the thirst, the true fortress I mean to assault. 

'Tis far better in tumbler to shelter one's nose, 
Where 'tis safer than in a war-helmet from blows. 
Better leader than trumpet or banner is sign 
Of the ivy and yew bush that show where there's wine. 

It is better by fireside to drink muscadel 
Than to go on a rampart to mount sentinel. 
I would rather the tavern attend without fail 
Than I'd follow my captain the breach to assail. 

All excesses, however, I hate and disclaim, 

Not a toper by nature, but only in name. 

Jolly wine, bringing laughter and friendly carouse, 

I have promised, and ever will pay you my vows.* 

And in another of his mirthful, vinous 
phantasies : 

To flee from my sadness, yet stay in one place, 
I take horn and staff, and I practice the chase. 

Catch, catch! 

Drink, drink! 

* Translation of J. P. Muirhead, M. A. 
12 



180 The Story of my House. 

Hip, hip! 
Catch, catch! 
Keep watch 
Lest it slip ! 

My game is the thirst, which I don't want to catch. 
But only to make it decamp with dispatch. 

The goblet's my bugle, which splendidly sounds 
When I lustily blow ; the bottle's my hounds. 

The table's my forest and hunting-field green 
When close set with covers for friends and me seen. 

I blow on my bugle, and, loud though he cry, 
Thirst soon will break cover, or else he must die. 

O sweet-sounding bugle, mouth-instrument dear! 
This pastime is charming when bedtime is near. 

Catch, catch! 

Drink, drink! 

Hip, hip! 

Catch, catch! 

Keep watch 

Lest it slip ! * 

But Le Houx's charming eulogies are by 
no means confined to wine. Cider, among 
the most refreshing and prophylactic of sum- 
mer beverages when well made, evokes al- 
most equally the playful strains of his lyre. 
Not less renowned than the juice of the ap- 
ple of Devonshire is the potent apple juice 
of Normandy, and even in his reference to 
this there constantly occurs the oft-repeated 
refrain : 

Drinking is sweeter than a kiss to me. 
* Translation of J. P. Muirhead, M. A. 



A Blue- Violet Salad. 



The true raison d'etre of the Vaux de 
Vire, it may be stated, was a jealous wife. 
Since the time of Le Houx there have been 
other jealous spouses that have driven their 
husbands to the bottle or to something 
worse; but none have done so with such 
smiling effect as the wife of the wine-lov- 
ing lawyer-poet of Vire. 

With the wine at the proper tempera- 
ture (and this point it is the bounden duty 
of the host to personally superintend), a 
few well-prepared courses partaken of with 
congenial friends amid pleasant surround- 
ings will prove far more agreeable and 
leave more grateful remembrances than the 
most elaborate banquet. In dining, more 
than in anything else, quality rather than 
quantity paves the way to happiness. 
The petit, and not the grand diner is the 
grace of the table. Like many of the ac- 
cidental things of life — the chance meeting, 
the suddenly conceived excursion, the un- 
expected visit from out-of-town friends — 
it is often the impromptu repast which in- 
spires the most delightful souvenirs. 

It was years ago, though I remember it 
as distinctly as if it were yesterday, when I 
found my friend St. Ange, after an absence 
of many months, ensconced in the library, 
La Gastronomie in one hand and the epicu- 
rean epigrams of Martial in the other. 

A Julienne soup, some smelt with a tar- 



1 82 The Story of my House. 

tare sauce, sheep's tongues a la Jardiniere, 
quail, and an endive salad were to compose 
the dinner. My guest's rosy face took on an 
added luster. His eyes brightened percep- 
tibly at the mention of the quail. 

" Let me prepare them ! " he exclaimed. 
" I will show you how to make a salmis of 
quail that is not down in the cook-books ; 
it is composed as you would blend and 
form an exquisite perfume : 

Thy crown of roses or of spikenard be ; 
A crown of thrushes is the crown for me.* 

I term it a salmis a la bourgeois gentilhom- 
me ; like Moliere's come die-ballet, it is pi- 
quant and full of delightful surprises. Give 
me the quail, the shallots, the truffles, the 
mushrooms, and you will never forget me! " 

There were four larded quails, freshly 
roasted. 

He took a piece of unsalted butter the 
size of an egg, placed it in the porcelain 
sauce-pan, and allowed it to liquefy. When 
it began to bubble, he put in two shallots 
and two sprigs of parsley finely minced, 
stirring until browned, adding a teaspoon- 
ful of sifted flour. When well incorporated, 
he supplemented this with two cupfuls of 
bouillon, a pinch of salt, and for the bouquet 
garni a third of a bay-leaf, two cloves, a 

* Martial. Elphinston's translation. 



A Blue- Violet Salad. 183 

small piece of cinnamon, a pinch of thyme, a 
dash of allspice and the merest trifle of nut- 
meg. Next he added two sliced truffles of 
Perigord, the juice of a can of button mush- 
rooms, a tablespoonful of cognac, a table- 
spoonful of water, and a wine-glass each of 
Chablis and St. Julien. 

His face glowed, his hazel eyes spar- 
kled, and every little while he tasted of the 
savory liaison. 

After pouring in the wine, he allowed 
the sauce to boil until reduced to the desired 
consistency. The can of mushrooms was 
then added ; and about ten minutes before 
serving, one of the quail was permitted to 
simmer in the perfumed sauce. Immedi- 
ately previous to placing the salmis in the 
chafing-dish, and decorating it with crou- 
tons, he dropped in a pepper-corn and 
stirred briskly. 

" ' Voila qui est Men ; ' c'est par fait, 
mon cher ! " he said with a smile ; " le sal- 
mis a Men reussi ! 

"I always use a good many herbs and 
seasonings," he continued, "though I em- 
ploy them only in very small quantities. 
By using them, infinite variety of flavorings 
may be produced, and they are, moreover, 
a great tonic to the stomach if dealt out by 
a judicious hand. Hence the superiority 
of good French cooking; variety is the 
spice of digestion. Indeed, pleasing savors 



1 84 The Story of my House. 

or sapid impressions usually exert the 
greatest influence upon the function of 
digestion. If they are good and agreeable, 
the secretion of the gastric juice is abun- 
dant, mastication is prolonged, deglutition 
and chylification are easy and rapid. If 
they are bad or repugnant, mastication be- 
comes a labor, deglutition difficult, and a 
distressed feeling is the inevitable result. 

"Perfection in cooking consists in render- 
ing all such substances as may be utilized 
for food as agreeable to the taste as they 
are easy to digest. The cook, therefore, 
besides possessing a palate of extreme deli- 
cacy, should be thoroughly acquainted with 
the hygienic properties of all the herbs and 
seasonings he employs, and this equally 
with reference to their effect upon the stom- 
ach as with regard to their pleasing im- 
pression upon the organ of taste. Ail 
spices and kindred stimulants should be 
used with the utmost tact and discrimina- 
tion. _ 

"But the pleasures that flit about the 
well-appointed table — the appetite which is, 
after all, the best of sauces and that leads to 
good digestion and consequent health and 
enjoyment of the other pleasures of life — 
depend upon more than the chef and the 
cuisine. Back of the most seductive dish 
and piquant sauce, there remains the capa- 
city to enjoy them, which is alone to be at- 



A Blue- Violet Salad. 185 

tained in its fullest measure by regular hab- 
its (habits as regular, at least, as rational 
pleasure and recreation will allow) ; and 
that greatest and purest of tonics and pro- 
phylactics — exercise in the open air." 

In due time the entree was partaken of. 
The impromptu chef had upset the kitchen 
from casserole to pot-au-feu, but his salmis 
was worthy of Careme. 

There was a great bunch of double vio- 
lets on the table, the lovely dark blue vari- 
ety {Viola odoratissima fl. pi.) with the 
short stems, freshly plucked from the violet 
frame of the garden, and the room was 
scented by their delicious breath. 

A bowl of broad-leaved Batavian endive 
blanched to a nicety and alluring as a siren's 
smile was placed upon the table. I almost 
fancied it was smiling at the violets. A 
blue -violet salad, by all means! there are 
violets, and to spare. 

On a separate dish there was a little 
minced celery, parsley, and chives. Four 
heaping salad - spoonfuls of olive oil were 
poured upon the herbs, with a dessertspoon- 
ful of white- wine vinegar (the best in the 
world comes from Orleans, France), the 
necessary salt and white pepper, and a 
tablespoonful of Bordeaux. The petals of 
two dozen violets were detached from the 
stems, and two thirds of them were incor- 
porated with the dressing. The dressing 



1 86 The Story of my House. 

being thoroughly mixed with the endive, 
the remaining flower petals were sprinkled 
over the salad and a half-dozen whole vio- 
lets placed in the center. 

The lovely blue sapphires glowed upon 
the white bosom of the endive ! It was the 
true sequence of the salmis. 

A white-labeled bottle, capsuled Yquem, 
and the cork branded " Lur Saluces," was 
served with the salad. You note the subtle 
aroma of pine-apple and fragrance of flower 
ottos with the detonation of the cork — the 
fine vintages of Yquem have a pronounced 
Ananassa flavor and bouquet that steeps the 
palate with its richness and scents the sur- 
rounding atmosphere. 

Now try your blue-violet salad. 

Is it fragrant ? is it cool ? is it delicious ? 
is it divine ? 




X. 



FOOTSTEPS OF SPRING. 

. . . The yong Sunn 
Hath in the Ramm his halve cours yrunn. 

Chaucer. 

In the earlier year when the chill winds blow 
The breath of buds with the breath of snow, 

And the climbing sap like a spirit passes 
Through trunks unscreened from the noonday glow, 

O'er the wind-frayed weeds and the withered grasses 

And the leaves that linger in layered masses, 
March, the Master of Hounds, doth go 

To hunt the hills and the wet morasses. 

C. H. Luders. 

y books, my flowers, and my col- 
orful interior surroundings do 
much to relieve the monotony of 
the long winter months. Not 
until Aries appears for his ac- 
customed charge upon the spring do I yearn 
intently for its advent. Then the days seem 
the longest — the tedious days of waiting; 
the longest days, which are to come, will 
be the shortest. For the days may not be 
measured by the length, but by the flight 
of the hours and the beauty they bring ; the 




The Story of my House. 



sun and the shadows shorten the longest 
day. 

Does not a restlessness come to man with 
the ascending sap in the trees, when he 
likewise would cast off the inertia that has 
possessed him, and respond to the magical 
touch of the sun ? There is much that is 
beautiful in the mythopceic representation 
of the seasons. All winter, says the legend, 
the sweet sunshine is chased by the relent- 
less storm, now hiding beneath the clouds," 
now below the hills, showing herself for a 
moment merely to flee again. But, finally 
becoming bolder, the Sunshine advances to 
meet the Storm, who, captivated by her 
beauty, woos her as he pursues her, and 
wins her for his bride. Then is there great 
rejoicing upon the earth, and from their 
union are born plants which spring from its 
surface and spangle it with flowers. But 
every autumn the Storm begins to frown 
anew, the Sunshine flees from him, and the 
pursuit begins again. 

Is not the sunshine, more than anything 
else, the prelude to spring? How it sifts 
and permeates through the windows into 
one's very being, this first March sunshine ! 
Looked at from within it is already spring 
without, so luminous the atmosphere and 
so soft the shadows. Perfectly aware am I 
that it may not continue and that the storm 
will cause the sunlight to hide itself again, 



Footsteps of Spring. 



just as it has done so often before when it 
merely gleamed for a moment from the 
edge of the cloud. Even now the fickle 
sun sinks behind a sharp dark band in the 
west. The mole must retreat to his bur- 
row ; to-morrow the storm and the snow ! 
At least the flowers will be shielded from 
the chilling blasts, and Nature work her 
own reward. Still must the north wind 
beat ere the south breeze may blow. But 
how, while it lasts, the sunlight warms 
where it falls, drawing a scarlet aureole 
from the maple, setting the snow-banks 
free, and liberating the ice-locked streams. 

Every morning now must the Sun rise 
earlier to fulfill his task. The buds of a 
million forests long for his touch, hillsides 
of spring beauty and violets are eager for 
his approach, the flowers in every meadow 
and woodland are awaiting his alchemy. 
Already the willow catkins have stirred at 
his caress. The shrubby dogwood has felt 
his force, and kindles into flame. The 
wands of the golden willow are gilded 
anew; the red horn of the great aroid is 
peering from the mold. 

Think of his task ! To clear the earth of 
its coverlet of snow and clarify the streams ; 
to burst the chrysalis and put forth the leaves ; 
to push up the grass blades and perfume the 
flowers ; to breathe upon and resuscitate all 
the dormant world of vegetable and ani- 



190 The Story of my House. 

mal life. The leaflets upon leaflets and fern 
fronds upon fern fronds the sunshine must 
unfold; the acres of grain and the clover 
fields it must fall upon ; the myriad fruits it 
must ripen ! 

Lo! how marvelous the task; a smile 
and a summons for all ! 

Down in the hollows of the wood where 
the wind-flowers grow, under the meadow- 
grasses where the blue flag and lily bulbs 
wait, below the waters to bid the marsh 
marigolds and arrowheads rise, into the far- 
thest swamps where the orchid hides, in 
waste places where tares and teazles crowd, 
on countless hillsides and in countless val- 
leys must the sunbeams penetrate and 
quicken to awakened life. And all this 
gradually, little by little, day by day, hour 
by hour, bringing forth each blossom at 
its appointed time, giving the butterfly his 
wings, providing the bee his sustenance. 
What is there here on earth to compare with 
the miracle of returning spring, the labor and 
strength of the Sun ? The power of Her- 
cules a trillion fold is concentrated in the 
rays that are loosing the fetters of the streams 
to-day. Lo! the marvel of the renascent 
year, when Earth renews her youth and 
Nature is born again. 

The March days pass, and more and 
more is the Sun's strength felt. His vassals, 
the showers and the south winds, he calls 



Footsteps of Spring. 191 

to aid him in his task ; and at once the 
grasses and larches turn green and arbutus 
and bloodroot are fanned into bloom. A 
mile away the sunshine lights the hills; a 
league away it burnishes and warms the 
river. Daily the beams stream upon the 
earth and reveal fresh treasures. Swiftly a 
shadow steals along the hills. The tem- 
pered April rain falls from the gray April 
sky. Responsive, the sward assumes a 
brighter green, the daffodil a richer gold. 
The sap mounts to the topmost branches 
and penetrates the minutest twigs. Day by 
day the naked sprays are feathered by the 
pushing buds. A scarf of green is flung 
across the copse. The shadblow silvers the 
woods, columbine and cranesbill throng the 
slopes, and hepatica and dog-tooth violet 
nod to the quickening breeze of spring. 

The spring days pass, but the miracle 
remains; hourly a new marvel is wrought 
by the sunlight and the shower. The oriole 
appears and orchards burst into bloom ; the 
wood-thrush sings and the dogwood and 
wild thprn join the flowering pageant. The 
warm perfumed breath of the new year 
floats upon the air — the breath of flower 
and grass and expanding bud. Nature's 
color-box opens anew ; her brush is laid 
upon each petal with what consummate 
address and variety ! — pink upon the petals 
of the peach, a flush on the cheek of the 



192 The Story of my House. 

apple bloom, a gloss of gold upon the but- 
tercup. The Trillium thrusts up its snowy 
triangles, the gold-thread its white stars, 
and banks become purple with violets. 
Tiny polypody and oak-fern replume the 
stumps and bowlders. From the frost- 
smitten meadows and waste places rise 
fresh pennants of green. Unfurled is the 
flag of spring. And the hues and odors 
that are still in embryo and the sunshine is 
preparing — all the sweets of June and the 
infinite beauties of midsummer, the wealth 
of the roses, the clover bloom, the laby- 
rinthine tangle of wild flowers, even to the 
asters and colored leaf of autumn. The 
foam and surge of the apple bloom are but 
a wave of the color and fragrance that is to 
be. /Eons ago the March sunlight fell upon 
the flowers and primeval nature. Vegeta- 
tion welcomed it then as it welcomes it 
now. Next year and the next year and 
centuries hence will it fall upon the earth 
and work out the miracle of spring. Is it 
not new and ever beautiful, this vernal res- 
urrection ? That we, too, possessed this 
subtle alchemy and might extract this elixir 
from the April sun ! 

How the wings of the doves glisten and 
mirror the rays as I watch them floating by 
my windows ! I love my flock of doves — 
the dove is so associated with the relent- 
ment of the elements and the olive leaf of 



Footsteps of Spring. 193 

spring. A monotonous life they lead in 
their diurnal circlings round the barn and 
their self-same route over their circum- 
scribed domain — a monotonous life, at 
least, it appears to the observer, while 
probably the very reverse to them. Every 
load of grain which comes to the neighbor- 
ing barns they may note from their vantage- 
ground and "meditate upon its special vir- 
tues. The droppings of the barley now 
being stored in yonder granary undoubted- 
ly form as weighty a subject to them as the 
fluctuations in the market do to the malt- 
ster himself. Then the incertitude which 
must attend the obtaining of their supply 
of food naturally furnishes them with a con- 
stant source of speculation ; besides, who but 
they themselves may know what petty bick- 
erings and jealousies form the daily routine 
of their inner life ? The jaunty leader of the 
flock who curves his iris neck so proudly 
may be the humblest of hen-pecked fathers in 
the privacy of his home ; and what appears 
to be the approving cooings of devoted 
dames may be only a prosaic homily on the 
part of his exacting wives. 

My flock of doves seem alway idling 
and courting the sunbeam. Now, appar- 
ently, they are drifting aimlessly upon the 
air ; again they veer suddenly, to turn a 
gleaming wing for me to admire. With 
what indescribable grace the circling forms 



194 The Story of my House. 

hover over the eaves after each of their 
tours of investigation, the swiftly fanning 
wings seeming to cease their motion simulta- 
neously as the flock alights, and once more 
preens its iris in the sun. Indecision is a 
characteristic of my flock of doves — always 
uncertain of the direction they would take, 
and apparently never satisfied for more than 
a passing moment with their surroundings. 
No sooner have they flown to the meadow 
beyond the copse than they are back again ; 
and scarcely have they perched upon the 
roof or discovered fresh pickings ere they 
take flight in another direction, to return as 
quickly. Is it that they, like the rest of us, 
are never content, and that much must have 
more ? I should like to quote them a lyric 
from John Wilbye's Second Set of Madri- 
gals, which possibly they may not have 
heard : 

I live, and yet methinks I do not breathe; 

I thirst and drink, I drink and thirst again ; 

I sleep, and yet do dream I am awake; 

I hope for that I have; I have and want; 

I sing and sigh; 1 love and hate at once. 
Oh tell me, restless soul, what uncouth jar 
Doth cause in store such want, in peace such 
war? 



There is a jewel which no Indian mines 
Can buy, no chymic art can counterfeit; 
It makes men rich in greatest poverty, 
Makes water wine, turns wooden cups to gold, 



Footsteps of Spring. 195 

The homely whistle to sweet music's strain : 
Seldom it comes, to few from heaven sent, 
That much in little, all in naught — Content.* 

The first of the migratory flocks have 
come. Is it the robins or the bluebirds 
first, or the omnipresent song-sparrow 
scattering his notes like a shower ? Warm 
as the scarlet of his wings is the greeting of 
the starling from his haven in the reeds ; 
and ah ! how sweet the carol of the mead- 
ow-lark from the distant fields. Again I 



* The student of French poetical literature will 
notice the marked resemblance in expression of a por- 
tion of this lovely lyric of fourteen lines and the fol- 
lowing prettily turned quator^ain by a singer of the 
sixteenth century : 

Ie vis, ie meurs : ie me brule & me noye, 
I'ay chaut estreme en endurant froidure: 
La vie m'est & trop molle & trop dure. 
I'ay grans ennuis entremeslez de ioye: 

Tout a un coup ie ris & ie larmoye, 
Et en plaisir maint grief tourment i 'endure: 
Mon bien s'en va, & a iamais il dure: 
Tout en un coup ie seiche & ie verdoye. 

Ainsi Amour inconstamment me meine: 
Et quand ie pense auoir plus de douleur, 
Sans y penser ie me treuue hors de peine. 

Puis quand ie croy ma ioye estre certeine, 
Et estre au haut de mon desire heur, 
II me remet en mon premier malheur. 

CEuures de Louize Labe Lionnoize. A Lion par Ian 
de Tournes, M.D.LVI. Auec Priuilege du Roy. 

13 



196 The Story of my House. 

hear the warble which the blackbird 
dropped when flying over the autumnal 
stubbles, only it has a cheeriness that is 
alone brought forth by sunshine and the 
lengthening days. Little flutings and grace 
notes rise from sheltered thickets and sunny 
hollows — assemblages of snow-birds, Can- 
ada sparrows, and red -polls practicing 
their Fruehlingslted. The white-throated 
sparrow's silver strain I hear on every side, 
the very beat of the spring-tide and song 
of the sunshine. Even the voice of the 
crow has a softer tone. From my study 
windows I watch the sable hosts returning 
to their roost in the distant wood. I see 
them slowly filing by during the winter, at 
the appointed hour, but less numerously, 
and seldom audibly. Now they voice their 
passage ; their shadows cast a sound. From 
time immemorial they have occupied a 
roost in the same wood, their numbers 
apparently neither increasing nor diminish- 
ing. The first squads fly over early in the 
evening, re-enforcements arriving continual- 
ly until dusk. They come from all directions, 
the total assemblage numbering perhaps a 
thousand. Above the tree-tops, for half an 
hour before dark, there ascends a weird 
chorus of evening, composed of every shade 
of corvine basso, and basso profondo. 
Borne from afar on the still evening air, the 
hoarse notes come to me mellowed and 



Footsteps of Spring. 197 

subdued — a fitting ave of the darkening 
day. 

Later, the first swallow races by, with 
the first moth in his bill, urged on the 
wider wings of the south wind — the first 
swallows, rather ; for there is not only one 
but a score coursing through the ether, ex- 
ultant in the freedom of existence. Do 
they, indeed, drop from the sky some bland 
spring morning — spirits of dead children 
revisiting their homes — as the fanciful Ro- 
man legend has it? How swiftly they 
cleave the air with their forked tail and 
sickle-shaped wings ! We marvel at the 
soaring of the hawk, balancing himself in 
an ever-widening and ascending circle, 
ever tracing the curve of beauty. We 
wonder at the agility of the humming-bird, 
and his power of suspension in mid-air 
over a flower. But the hawk barely flaps 
a pinion, sustained through some inexpli- 
cable agency in overcoming the natural 
force of gravity; and the humming-bird 
every little while rests from the friction of 
the air. Is not the perpetual flight of the 
swallow, his unceasing motion and inces- 
sant turning upon himself a greater wonder ? 

I stand on the margin of the stream just 
before an impending shower, when a con- 
course of hirundines is intent upon the 
capture of its prey. The surface is dimpled 
by the constant rising of feeding trout, and 



198 The Story of my House, 

brushed every now and then by a bird 
drinking on the wing. It is a favorite 
haunt of both fly-catchers and swallows, 
lured by the rich insect fauna that congre- 
gate above the still expanse of water, the 
ephemerina dancing their joyous dance of 
an hour. The stream is scarcely a rod and 
a half wide. It is almost overarched with 
bushes and trees, and abounds with curves. 
There are at least forty swallows hawking 
over it, all chasing above the glassy surface, 
ceaselessly coming and going, swift as mis- 
siles sprung from a sling. Yet not a cat- 
kin of the alder tangle or blade of the 
rushes is so much as grazed by a wing; 
not a barbule of one bird ruffled by the 
feather of another, amid all their lightning 
turns and curvatures. It is the same in 
their chase over a field when attracted close 
to the earth by insects. It is the same in 
their coursing through the air which I see 
through my windows, only they have but 
their fellows, and no other objects to avoid. 
Yet even then their flight is a perpetual 
Wonder. 

Sacred to the pennies the swallow was 
rightly held ; it were a Vandal who would 
harm them. Beloved wherever they roam 
the sky, Procne has, nevertheless, been 
comparatively neglected by the Muse, while 
Philomela has received the greater homage. 
Is not the swallow's warble sweet, asso- 



Footsteps of Spring. 199 

ciated as it is not only with the swallow's 
beauty, but with our very houses and barns 
and the blue sky that bends above them ? 
Best known of all individual "pursuers of 
the sun " is the bird mentioned in the fifth 
stanza of the Elegy: 

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed ; 

and his companion of the Winter's Tale, 
wheeling between daffodils and violets. 
Keats's line is among the most expressive 
that have been written on the bird : 

Swallows obeying the south summer's call. 

Hood's simile is also fine: 

Summer is gone on swallow's wings. 

Gay, in The Shepherd's Walk, has the 
swallow do graceful duty as a weather- 
prophet : 

When swallows fleet soar high and sport in air, 
He told us that the welkin would be clear. 

Athenseus has referred as happily to the 
bird as any of the old Greek poets in a frag- 
ment, The Song of the Swallow : 

The swallow is come, she is come to bring 
The laughing hours of the blithesome spring — 
The youth of the year and its sunshine bright — 
With her back all dark and her breast all white. 

From the Fables of Lessing I learn that 
the swallow was originally as harmonious 



200 The Story of my House. 

and melodious a songster as the nightingale, 
until, becoming weaned of dwelling in lone- 
ly thickets to be heard and admired only by 
peasants and shepherds, she forsook her 
humble friends and took flight to the town. 
But, in the mad rush of the city, men found 
no time to listen to her heavenly lay, for- 
getting which, by and by, instead of sing- 
ing she learned to build. 

I recall no reference to the swallow, 
however, comparable to Charles Tennyson 
Turner's, in one of his many lovely sonnets, 
Wind on the Corn. Not only the swallow 
himself is there, wheeling and curveting in 
all his buoyant grace, but the wind which 
accelerates his speed, and the rippling wheat 
field he loves to woo. The sonnet must be 
read in its entirety, and to recall it calls for 
no apology ; it becomes the more beautiful 
the more frequently it is read : 

Full often as I rove by path or stile 

To watch the harvest ripening in the vale, 
Slowly and sweetly, like a growing smile — 

A smile that ends in laughter — the quick gale 
Upon the breadths of gold-green wheat descends; 

While still the swallow, with unbaffled grace, 
About his viewless quarry dips and bends — 

And all the fine excitement of the chase 
Lies in the hunter's beauty; in the eclipse 

Of that brief shadow how the barley's beard 
Tilts at the passing gloom, and wild rose dips 

Among the white-tops in the ditches reared; 
And hedgerow's flowery breast of lacework stirs 
Faintly in that full wind that rocks the outstanding firs. 



Footsteps of Spring. 



Truly Boileau was right in his affirmation — 
a faultless sonnet is in itself worth a long 
poem ; and Asselineau — fine sonnets, like 
all beautiful things in this v/orld, are with- 
out price. No less beautiful is Turner's 
companion sonnet, A Summer Twilight — 
an intaglio cut in green jade — where the 
baf s flitting shadow, instead of the swal- 
low's flashing wing, imparts life and motion 
to the scene. 

The first lady-bugs, called forth by the 
grateful warmth, have left their hibernacle. 
The first wasps and blue -bottle flies are 
buzzing and bumping against the south 
window panes. I catch the first tremolo 
of the toads and piercing treble of the hy- 
lodes. 

My first green bullfrog, too, "whom 
the Muses have ordained to sing for aye." 
Again I hear his grand diapason, just as I 
heard it last year and every year before as 
long as I can remember. Apparently from 
the same place in the marsh, amid the 
pond weeds and water-plantains, where he 
suns himself and dozes by day, and launches 
his maestoso at night. I wonder if it is really 
the same frog, with his great yellow ears 
and blinking eyes, and if ever he grows old ? 
It is the old voice from the old place, more 
powerful and sonorous than the voices of 
his fellows. What a fine time he has of it 
—slumbering in the ooze throughout the 



202 The Story of my House. 

winter, while I am shaking with the cold ; 
cool and comfortable throughout the sum- 
mer, when I am sweltering with the heat; 
with nothing to do but bask and bathe, or 
thrust out his long tongue for the flies that 
are foolish enough to think him asleep. I 
heard him just two days earlier this year 
than last, May 14, ten days later than the 
first swallow to make his presence known. 
It is said he must thrice put on his specta- 
cles ere he permanently deserts his couch in 
the mire — i. e., look through the ice three 
times before he rises with triumphant song. 
He is invariably the latest of the spring 
choristers, and at once his magnificent 
basso completes the vernal pastoral. 

I wish I might obtain the recipe of his 
spring bitters. Is it water-cresses or water- 
plantain ? It is evident he grows younger 
with advancing years. "The croaking of 
frogs," said Martin Luther, "edifies noth- 
ing at all; it is mere sophistry and fruit- 
less." But, unlike the frog, Luther did 
not relish a Diet of Worms ; and I am not 
sure that the woodcuts of the old reformer 
do not resemble the head of my friend of 
the swamp, whose melody floats so se- 
renely through the summer dusks. Hor- 
ace, generally correct, was wrong with re- 
spect to the frog : 

. . . Ranaeque palustres 
Avertunt somnos. 



Footsteps of Spring. 203 

The frog's is a somnolent voice if heard at 
a proper distance. One should not expect 
harmony from wind instruments in the first 
row of the orchestra chairs. If one's frogs 
annoy one, he should remove his swamp 
or his house. The orchestra of Nature calls 
for its bassoon and its cymbals — the bull- 
frog and the cicada. 

A new poet has recently appeared in the 
Dominion. Among his many poems of 
pronounced freshness and beauty is one on 
the frog — more strictly speaking, five po- 
ems, for the panegyric consists of five con- 
nected sonnets. Not alone does this grace- 
ful lyrist and keen interpreter of Nature place 
the frog as the grand diurnal musician of 
spring, but he accords him a no less exalted 
place as a soothing minstrel of the estival 
night. I should be guilty of ingratitude to 
my resonant friend of the swamp did I not 
append the fourth sonnet of the musical 
quintet : 

And when day passed and over heaven's height, 
Thin with the many stars and cool with dew, 
The fingers of the deep hours slowly drew 

The wonder of the ever-healing night, 

No grief or loneliness or rapt delight 

Or weight of silence ever brought to you 
Slumber or rest; only your voices grew 

More high and solemn ; slowly, with hushed flight, 

Ye saw the echoing hours go by, long-drawn, 
Nor ever stirred, watching with fathomless eyes 
And with your countless clear antiphonies 

Filling the earth and heaven, even till dawn, 



204 The Story of my House. 

Last risen, found you with its first pale gleam, 
Still with soft throats unaltered in your dream.* 

Clearly Horace was at fault. The Greeks 
thought better of the musical piper of the 
marsh ; but it has remained for the Canadian 
poet to chant more sweetly of him than 
even Theocritus and Aristophanes. 

After the treble of the hylodes, suddenly 
the first bee hums by in quest of the await- 
ing flower. The first butterfly flutters past, 
the first night-hawk booms, the first bat 
hunts against the crimson afterglow, and, 
behold! it is spring. "The weather of the 
Renouveau," old Ronsard hymned it — the 
miracle of the sunshine, the south wind, and 
the shower. 



* Among the Millet, and other Poems. By Archi- 
bald Lampman. Ottawa: J. Durie and Son. 1888. 
Pp. 151. 




XI. 



MAGICIANS OF THE SHELVES. 



i. 



Around the hardest cark and toil lies the imagina- 
tive world of the poets and romancists, and thither we 
sometimes escape to snatch a mouthful of serener air. 
— Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp. 

Let that which I borrow be survaied, and then tell 
me whether 1 have made good choice of ornaments to 
beautify and set forth the invention. ... I number 
not my borrowings, but I weigh them. And if I would 
have made their number to prevaile, I would have had 
twice as many. — Montaigne, Of Bookes. 




f my rugs and porcelains are a 
study and delight in color, what 
shall I say of my books, these 
manifold colors and hues of the 
mind that rejoice the inward 
eye ? When what Francois de Sales terms 
a "dryness of soul" comes over me, are 
not the genii of the library alway ready to 
instruct and charm ? Not a myth, but a 
reality is the fabled lamp of Aladdin, lumi- 
nous still on many an immortal author's 
page. 



206 The Story of my House. 

" Un bon feu, des livres, et des plumes, 
que de ressources contre V ennui!" ex- 
claims De Maistre. With a well-chosen 
library, even sickness loses its sting, and 
often a good book may prove a more effi- 
cient remedial agent than a physician's 
draught. Somewhere among the volumes 
there exists a balm for nearly every ill — 
books to stimulate and books to soothe, 
books for instruction and books for ennui. 
Every mood of the mind should be reflected 
from the library shelves, just as Bacon holds 
it that in the royal ordering of gardens 
there ought to be gardens for every month 
in the year. Books there should be in 
abundance that may be read again and 
again ; books that may be taken in install- 
ments, every page of each one of which is 
a golden page ; books to pore over as a miser 
conns his gold ; books to be dipped into, or 
looked at "with half-shut eyes." From 
each page or each chapter of a good book 
there should be extracted a beautiful thought, 
as the wind in passing through a wood 
draws from each tree a musical note. That 
we possessed the memory of Scheherazade 
and could remember the books we have 
read ! 

No doubt, books are the great instruct- 
ors, though Gautier's idea is an excellent 
one, that each college possess a well- 
equipped ship to make the voyage around 



Magicians of the Shelves. 207 

the world to read the universal book, the 
best written book of all. Unfortunately, 
every one may not sail round the world, 
but very many of us must be content, like 
De Maistre, with a voyage around our 
room. And wise, far-seeing Pascal long 
ago told us that nearly all our troubles arose 
from our not knowing how to remain in 
our own room. Perhaps, on the whole, 
this is among the pleasantest ways of jour- 
neying. You have but to step on board 
one of the numerous crafts in waiting, and 
with no further trouble than that of turning 
over the pages, set sail for any port of the 
universe. All this with a merely nominal 
price for passage, and relieved of every dis- 
comfort of travel. 

May I not, with Symonds, muse upon 
the staircase of the Propylsea and wander 
through the theatre of Dionysius? Do I 
not visit the most romantic of all castles 
with Thomson ? and what wood so cool 
and shadowy to stroll in as the forest of 
Arden ? With Jennings I ramble among 
the Derbyshire hills and breast the breeze 
of the Sussex Downs; with Hamerton I 
float down the Unknown River; and with 
Higginson rock in a wherry and lounge 
about the Oldport wharves. Arm in arm 
* with sweet Mariette, Murger again leads me 
through the Latin Quarter and the old lilac- 
scented gardens of the Luxembourg. Re- 



208 The Story of my House. 

posing in my easy chair, I may almost 
make the tour of the world in the sprightli- 
est, most instructive company it is possible 
to imagine — Dumas pere, in his inimitable 
impressions de Voyage, is my guide, phi- 
losopher, and friend. The delightful dinners 
he invites me to, the delicious wines he 
sets before me, the sparkling anecdotes 
that are ever bubbling from his entrancing 
pen ! I mount his easy Pegasus with De 
Amicis, and exchange the blinding snow for 
soft Andalusian sunshine. What an enter- 
taining raconteur I have in Francis Francis 
to explain the traditions of manor and castle, 
and discourse upon British scenery; and 
what lovely trout I catch when, rod in 
hand, I follow him By Lake and River ! 
Hawthorne raises his wand, and I am saun- 
tering through the Borghese gardens. With 
Jefferies I accompany lovely Amaryllis at 
the Fair; and with Robinson I wander 
through an Indian Garden and listen to the 
bulbul's song. There is no dust, the 
sun does not glare, I require no waterproof 
or courier in these easy voyages. I turn 
the enchanted pages, and the sun shines for 
me at just the right angle. My rambles 
never fatigue, however long the lane or 
steep the hillside. I need not worry over 
the arrival or departure of trains, dispute 
with landlords, or bother with luggage. At 
a signal, my ship is in waiting, ready to 






Magicians of the Shelves. 209 

stop at the port I designate ; in an hour a 
smooth roadbed carries me across a king- 
dom, without a delay, without a jar. There 
can be nothing more delightful than these 
imaginary journeys. 

" The ever- widening realm of books ! " 
Over two centuries ago, echoing the voice 
of the ancients, Henry Vaughan decried 
against their constantly increasing multi- 
tude: 

... As great a store 
Have we of books as bees of herbs, or more; 
And the great task to try, then know the good, 
To discern weeds and judge of wholesome food, 
Is a rare scant performance. 

What a sifting there must be among them 
some day, as the volumes continue to accu- 
mulate — the mediocre cast aside to make 
room for the meritorious ! Will there not 
eventually be some invention to preserve old 
books, an enamel for musty tomes, as wood 
is vulcanized or bodies are embalmed ? Or 
must many works now existing in numer- 
ous volumes be reduced to extracts to find 
shelf-room for them all ? 

But to those who may be anxious re- 
garding the accumulation of books, De 
Mercier offers this consolation: " The inde- 
fatigable hand of the grocers, the druggists, 
the butter merchants, etc., destroy as many 
books and brochures daily as are printed; 
the paper-gatherers come next; and all 



210 The Story of my House. 

these hands, happily destructive, preserve 
the equilibrium. Without them the mass 
of printed paper would increase to an in- 
convenient degree, and in the end chase all 
the proprietors and tenants out of their 
houses. The same proportion is to be ob- 
served between the making of books and 
their decomposition as between life and 
death — a balm I address to those that the 
multitude of books worries or grieves." 

What works will survive, and what 
books shall we read? " If the writers of 
the brazen age are most suggestive to thee, 
confine thyself to them, and leave those of 
the Augustan age to dust and the book- 
worms," says the transcendentalist of Wal- 
den. " Something like the woodland 
sounds," the same author observes, "will 
be heard to echo through the leaves of a 
good book. Sometimes I hear the fresh 
emphatic note of the oven-bird and am 
tempted to turn many pages; sometimes 
the hurried chuckling sound of the squirrel 
when he dives into the wall." " In science 
read by preference the newest works; in 
literature the oldest. The classic literature 
is always modern. New books revive and 
redecorate old ideas; old books suggest 
and invigorate new ideas," says Bulwer. 
For knowledge of the world and literature, 
for polished grace of diction, for elevated 
and refined thought, and for the rhythm of 



Magicians of the Shelves. 2 1 1 

beautiful prose, Bulwer might have called 
attention to his own essays, individual in 
the language. The publisher is yet to be 
thanked who will present Life, Literature, 
and Manners in a worthy and convenient 
form. 

We read and learn and forget from the 
classics and the modern novelist as well. 
I sometimes wonder how posterity will 
regard the great writers of the present 
generation — whether Holmes will hold a 
more exalted place a century hence, or the 
Scarlet Letter fade. Will a mightier 
Shakespeare rise, and a sweeter Tennyson 
sing ? And instead of sending posterity to 
Addison and Goldsmith for beautiful style, 
will the twenty-first century mentor refer 
the reader to a Spectator of an age that is 
yet to dawn ? 

The multitude of books one should 
read ! It takes one's breath away to think 
of the titles. They are as innumerable as 
the buttercups of the meadow. Think of 
them ! the miles and leagues of folios, 
quartos, octavos, duodecimos, 16, 18, 24, 
and 32 mos. on every conceivable subject that 
are sent out every year ! The rows and 
rows of shelves, fathoms deep, of old books 
in numberless editions, cut and uncut, in 
cloth, parchment, sheep, pigskin, and calf, 
reposing in the book-stalls and libraries ! 
Books grave and gay, comic and serious, 
14 



The Story of my House. 



storehouses of knowledge that are con- 
stantly shifting hands ; others precious be- 
yond price that are buried out of sight, 
their beautiful thoughts unread ! The tons 
and tons of printed pages, in poetry and 
prose, awake and asleep in the public and 
private libraries of the great cities ! They 
are as clover-tops in a field. 

' ' The best hundred books ! " Who shall 
single them out from the mighty multitude ? 
It is like attempting to name the most 
beautiful flower, the most lovely woman — 
no one may know them all, and every one 
has his preferences. In life, art, and the 
study of literature it is at best a difficult 
question to point out the right way, as 
there are numerous considerations which 
require to be left largely to the discrimina- 
tion of the person most concerned. 

To decide on the merits of a work one 
may not take another's opinion ; one must 
needs read, mark, and digest it for himself. 
The reader who blindly submits to the dic- 
tum of another rarely does so to advantage. 
Far better to please one's self and scout the 
arbiters. Every person should form his 
own estimate of the merits or demerits of a 
work. When Robert Buchanan terms the 
author of such exquisite verse as Les Taches 
Jaunes, and such finished prose as La Morte 
Amoureuse "a hair-dresser's dummy of a 
stylist," how is one to be governed in the 



Magicians of the Shelves. 213 

choice of his reading, save from the stand- 
point of his own taste ! Because Sir Ora- 
cle admires Gil Bias and the Pantagruel, is 
no reason why you should do so, and be- 
cause a Taine may proclaim Pope a pur- 
loiner and a mere juggler of phrase it does 
not necessarily follow that the Essay on 
Man is not one of the brightest jewels of 
the language. Wisest is he who maps 
out his own course of study and reading. 
The predication of others can not make 
that pleasing to him which is in utter vari- 
ance to his tastes and sympathies. "A 
literary judgment is generally supposed to 
be formed by canons of criticism," remarks 
Van Dyke, "but the canons are generally 
individual canons, and the criticism is but 
the synonym of a preference." 

Often the bell-weather leads the flock 
astray. Carlyle would have had A Mid- 
summer Night's Dream written in prose, 
and declared that Tennyson wrote in verse 
because the schoolmaster had taught him it 
was great to do so, and had thus been 
turned from the true path for a man. 
Emerson was always interested in Haw- 
thorne's fine personality, but could not 
appreciate his writings, while, equally 
strange, the author of the exquisite Prose 
Idyls extols the labored Recreations of 
North. Holmes "never felt to appreciate 
Irving as the majority look upon him," and 



2i-4 The Story of my House. 

thinks the Sketch-Book "an overrated 
affair." Fitzgerald did not like In Memo- 
riam, The Princess, or The Idyls, and wished 
there were nothing after the 1842 volume. 
In Memoriam has the air, he says, of being 
evolved by a poetical machine of the very 
highest order. Voltaire thought the ^Eneid 
the most beautiful monument which re- 
mains to us of all antiquity. Peignot, in his 
erudite Traite du Choix des Livres, terms 
the Georgics the most perfect poem of 
antiquity, thereby echoing the opinion of 
Montaigne, who pronounced it "the most 
accomplished peece of worke of Poesie." 

Edmund Gosse finds Tristram Shandy 
dull; Bulwer asserts that only writers the 
most practiced could safely venture an oc- 
casional restrained imitation of its frolicsome 
zoneless graces. Possibly Horace Walpole 
comes nearer the mark in referring to it as 
a very insipid and tedious performance, 
though he might have defined it as a re- 
markable work on obstetrics. 

Skipping Don Quixote and the Vicar of 
Wakefield, and not having read Die Wahl- 
verwandtschaften, Jane Eyre, My Novel, 
Rob Roy, The Three Musketeers, The Scar- 
let Letter, Charles O'Malley, and how 
many others ! La Harpe terms Tom Jones 
"the foremost novel of the world" (le pre- 
mier roman du monde). So, I believe, 
does Lowell. Wilkie Collins, shortly be- 



Magicians of the Shelves. 215 

fore his death, gave the honor to The Anti- 
quary. The same renowned critic (La 
Harpe), considered the Divine Comedy "a 
stupidly barbarous amplification " (une am- 
plification stupidement barbare) ; Mezieres, 
another French critic, thinks it deserves to 
be termed "the epopee of Christian peo- 
ples" (die merite d'etre appelee I' epopee 
des peuples Chretiens). 

"We read the Paradise Lost as a task," 
growls Dr. Johnson. "Nay, rather as a 
celestial recreation," whispers Lamb. "I 
would forgive a man for not reading Mil- 
ton," Lamb naively adds, "but I would 
not call that man my friend who should be 
offended with the divine chit-chat of Cow- 
per." Again, though I myself may see 
much to praise but less to please in Para- 
dise Lost, infinitely preferring Lycidas, the 
Allegro, and the Penseroso, I may, never- 
theless, admire Lamb; and though I may 
recognize the worth of Mezieres, I may dis- 
like the Divine Comedy. All of us may 
not care for the Pilgrim's Progress or 
Hudibras; and some may prefer Cellini's or 
Rousseau's autobiography to Boswell's bi- 
ography, — it is not always so easy to read 
and admire the books one should read and 
admire from another's standpoint. 

What two persons look at things pre- 
cisely the same ? Human thought and hu- 
man opinion are as varied as the expression 



216 The Story of my House. % 

of the human face. "There never was in 
the world two opinions alike, no more than 
two hairs or two grains. The most uni- 
versal quality is diversity," observes Mon- 
taigne. "An opinion," says the sparkling 
author of Bachelor Bluff, "is simply an angle 
of reflection, or the facet which one's indi- 
viduality presents to a subject, measuring 
not the whole or many parts of it, but the 
dimensions of the reflecting surface. It is 
something, perhaps, if the reflection within 
its limits is a true one." There are particu- 
lar writers that, never widely popular, will 
always have their particular admirers, and 
we all of us have our special subjects or 
predilections that we wish to know most 
about, or are most interested in. 

" L'histoire c'est mo gibier en matiere 
des liures, ou la poesie que i'ayme d'vne 
particuliere inclinatio " (history is my 
game in the chase for books, or poetry, 
which I especially dote upon), again ob- 
serves Montaigne. Montaigne is so quaint 
he should be mused over in an old edition ; 
it is like gathering mushrooms from an old 
pasture on a hazy autumn day. Plainly, it 
is out of the question to read everything 
even on a single subject, and many good 
books are practically unattainable. The 
Book-Worm, perched upon his ladder with 
a duodecimo in one hand, a quarto under 
his arm, and a folio between his knees has 



Magicians of the Shelves. 217 

at least four sealed volumes. Each person 
will read preferably such books as are in 
keeping with his tastes and line of thought, 
though he will greatly stimulate and enlarge 
his thought by also reading books diamet- 
rically opposed to his taste. The somewhat 
prosy mind will be benefited by familiarity 
with the poets ; the super-poetic is improved 
by the balance and adjustment to be found 
in the study of works of reason and criticism. 

But even then we may not read "the 
best hundred books" of some one else's 
choosing. "We are happy from possessing 
what we like, not from possessing what 
others like," La Rochefoucauld remarks ; 
and his maxim is pertinent to the library. 
Tastes will ever differ in books and in bind- 
ings, in epics and in lyrics. Many nice 
people one knows, but one has not the 
time, neither does one care to make bosom 
friends of them all. Or, to cite Goldsmith, 
"Though fond of many acquaintances, I de- 
sire an intimacy only with a few." Seldom 
do we admire in age that which captivates 
us in youth, and that which moves us in 
one mood may not appeal to us in another. 

The most omnivorous book-worm can 
read comparatively little. Those who read 
slowly and digest what they read — if there 
is time in life to read slowly — may read still 
less. There is much in Bulwer's sentence : 
"Reading without purpose is sauntering, 



218 The Story of my House. 

not exercise. More is got from one book 
on which the thought settles for a definite 
end than from libraries skimmed over by a 
wandering eye. A cottage garden gives 
honey to the bee, a king's garden none to 
the butterfly." 

A happy remark with reference to the 
best - hundred - books controversy is that 
credited to Herman Merivale — "those 
books which everybody says everybody 
else must read, but never reads himself." 
"We praise that which is praised much 
more than that which is praisable," is a 
pithy saying of La Bruyere. Charles Lamb 
included in his catalogue of " boohs which 
are no books generally all those volumes 
which 'no gentleman's library should be 
without.'" The author of that delicious 
anonymity, A Club of One (A. P. Rus- 
sell), the failure to read which should send 
the delinquent to Coventry, is more of a 
philosopher than many of the professed lit- 
erary law-givers. It is true he presents a 
list of his favorite books, but the list num- 
bers considerably over two hundred, and 
these are delicately suggested, and not dic- 
tated in a perfunctory way ; I have no doubt 
he has since added two hundred more. He 
must have read and remembered ten times 
a hundred to write the volume in question, 
and ransacked whole libraries to compose 
the companion volumes, Library Notes and 



Magicians of the Shelves. 219 

In a Club Corner, veritable mines of spark- 
ling sayings, sententious precepts, and lit- 
erary anecdote. 

Dana and Johnson have selected Fifty 
Perfect Poems with excellent judgment, no 
doubt, though who was responsible for the 
insertion of numbers forty-three and fifty is 
not stated in the preface. The Elegy, the 
Ode on a Grecian Urn, The Lotus Eaters, 
and a half-dozen other selections every one 
must have included in a similar collection. 
But beyond this dozen or so of immortal 
poems that by no possibility might be omit- 
ted, it is safe to say that almost any other 
anthologist would have gathered Chrys- 
anthemce totally different — so varied are in- 
individual tastes both in poetry and prose. 
The fifty best poems and the hundred best 
books to Dobson may not be the hundred 
best books and the fifty best poems to Gosse 
or Lang. The marvel is how Johnson and 
Dana could agree. 

The scholar and the student who live for 
their books, the author, the man of elegant 
leisure, or the bibliophile may be benefited 
by a very large library, and share their bene- 
fits with the world ; though there is often no 
little truth in what Gerard de Nerval said of 
the latter in a perverted sense of the term : 
"A serious bibliophile does not share his 
books ; he does not even read them himself 
for fear of fatiguing them." 



220 The Story of my House. 

"The amateur is born," Derome goes 
on to say in Le Luxe des Livres; "he holds 
the Muses captive. If books could speak 
they would pronounce him a hard jailer. 
The bibliophiles ruin themselves in their 
calling, neglecting their duties to their fami- 
lies. Such are not men of letters, they are 
bibliotaphes. They bury their books, they 
do not possess them. . . . The luxury of 
bindings is extended to profusion. It is the 
fete of red morocco and tawny calf." La 
Rousse thus defines the term bibliotaphe: 
' ' From the Greek biblion, book ; tapho, I in- 
ter, I hide. i. He who lends his books to 
no one, who buries them, inters them in his 
library. 2. A reserved portion of a library 
where precious works or works that one 
does not wish to communicate are locked 
up." Nodier made still another discrimina- 
tion, that of the bibliophobe whom he thus 
describes: "The bibliophobe would see 
nothing out of the way in burning libraries. 
He sells the copies that are dedicated to 
him, and does not return the service. 

Between the bibliophile and the biblio- 
mane Nodier draws this distinction : "The 
bibliophile chooses his books, the biblio- 
mane entombs them ; the bibliophile appre- 
ciates, the other weighs ; the bibliophile has 
a magnifying glass, the other a fathom 
measure." But the close consanguinity 
which exists between the book-lover and 



Magicians of the Shelves. 221 

the book-collector ; the narrow strip divid- 
ing terra firma from the dangerous marsh 
ever lighted by ignes-fatui that lure the 
pursuer on and on, is well defined by Bur- 
ton in the introduction to The Book Hunter, 
where, referring to the class for whom the 
volume was written, he finds it difficult to 
say whether he should give them a good 
name or a bad, whether he should charac- 
terize them by a predicate eulogistic or a 
predicate dyslogistic. 

We all know of the man who paid a 
fabulous sum for a copy of a very rare work, 
only to consign it to the flames on receiv- 
ing it, in order that his own copy might 
have no duplicate. This is an exceptional 
form of the bibliolythist, or book-burner. 
Among this class are included authors 
ashamed of their first writings, authors who 
have changed their political or religious 
views, or who have eulogized a friend who 
has become a bitter enemy. There exists 
another form of the bibliolythist which Fitz- 
gerald has omitted from his Romance of 
Book-Collecting — the ''burking" of a work 
by one who has been assailed. I know of a 
standing offer from a gentleman of three dol- 
lars apiece for every copy that booksellers 
send him of a certain volume which retails 
for a fifth of the price. The work contains 
a reflection on one of his ancestors, and as 
soon as the volumes are received they are 



222 The Story of my House. 

burned. But the book -burner is by no 
means a modern institution, Nero and Caliph 
Omar still remaining the greatest of bibli- 
olythists. 

I would suggest as another desirable 
term to add to the lexicon of the bibliopho- 
list the term bibliodcemon, or book-fiend — a 
designation expressive of something more 
than the ordinary significance of "book- 
borrower," innocent enough, no doubt, in 
some of his milder forms, but exasperating 
to the last degree in his most depraved 
phases. The borrowing of a reference book 
or a volume, a chapter or a page of which 
may touch upon a subject that one desires 
to consult merely for the time being, is a 
matter apart. So also is the exchange of 
books between friends, or the borrowing 
of a work not readily procurable, the recipi- 
ent on his part standing ready to return the 
courtesy, and forthwith restoring the vol- 
ume unsullied. 

Promptness in returning and scrupulous 
care of a volume are the tests which dis- 
tinguish the comparatively harmless form 
of the borrower from the aggravated and 
exasperating one. The miserly practice of 
borrowing books, books from which the 
well-to-do borrower seeks to derive pleas- 
ure or benefit without returning a just 
equivalent, simply to shirk the trifling cost 
of the volume he covets, deserves the se- 



Magicians of the Shelves. 22) 

verest stricture. Such are library dead- 
heads and defaulters to publishers and au- 
thors. It is this form of the bibliodaemon 
who retains desumed copies for an indefi- 
nite period, trusting the loan may be for- 
gotten; and who, deaf to all ordinary ap- 
peals and reminders, only relinquishes the 
volume — frequently maltreated — when vir- 
tually wrested from him at his home. The 
celebrated French bibliophile Pixerecourt 
had inserted on the frontal of his library- 
case these pertinent lines : 

Tel est le triste sort de tout livre prete: 
Souvent il est perdu, toujours il est gate. 

Each book that's loaned the same sad fate o'ertakes — 
'Tis either lost or sent back with the shakes. 

There really exists no reason why books 
should be loaned — there are always the pub- 
lic libraries in which the borrower may ply 
his trade. 

A former shepherd of the printed flocks 
in the library of a neighboring town relates 
an incident illustrating a singular form of 
book borrowing, the offender being a di- 
vine. Passionately fond of books, he would 
take them home, forgetting to return them, 
and when interrogated would always find a 
happy excuse, the store of borrowed books 
meanwhile accumulating. "A scholar and 
a man of exemplary character and fine 
sensibilities, I did not wish to wound his 



224 The Story of my House. 

feelings by an imperative demand, being 
convinced from what I knew of him, that 
it was a slight lesion rather than a fracture 
of the mind which caused the delinquency. 
I therefore awaited his departure, and one 
morning, driving to his home with a buggy 
and a basket, I took possession of the bor- 
rowed volumes. He never referred to it. I 
do not think he even missed them. His 
passion was the joy of first readings, and 
he was proverbially forgetful." 

My scintillant and learned friend the 
Doctor, who for years graced the Greek 
chair at the University, and whose name is 
a household word among scholars, as his 
presence is a ray of sunlight wherever he 
appears, contributes this supplement to the 
lexicon of the book-lover. The general 
reader will skip this passage; the bibliophile 
will thank him : 

Bibliodcemon : a book-fiend or demon. 

S: ; l^ H 4 abook - eaterorde ™ urer - 

Biblioleter 1 

Bibliopollyon > a book-destroyer, ravager, or waster. 

Bibliophthor ) 

Biblioloigos : a book-pest or plague. 

BmTokhpt \ a book-plunderer or robber. 
Bibliocharybdis : a Charybdis of books. 
Biblioriptos : one who throws books around. 



XII. 



MAGICIANS OF THE SHELVES. 



As wine and oil are imported to us from abroad, so 
must ripe understanding and many civil virtues be im- 
ported into our minds from foreign writings. — Milton. 

It is pleasant to take down one of the magicians of 
the shelf, to annihilate my neighbor and his evening 
parties, and to wander off through quiet country lanes 
into some sleepy hollow of the past. — Cornhill Maga- 
zine. — Rambles among Books. 




^t was held by Disraeli that liter- 
ature is in no wise injured by 
the bibliophile, since though the 
worthless may be preserved, 
the good is necessarily protect- 
ed, he no doubt having in mind the death 
of the collector and subsequent sale of his 
library. For though the bibliophile may 
stint his family and hoard his golden leaves 
and tooling, at least he abhors dog's-ears and 
keeps his treasures clean. La Bruyere, who 
gave us the delightful maxim, "We only 
write in order to be heard, but in writing we 
should only let beautiful things be heard," 



226 The Story of my House. 

referred to these accumulations as "tanner- 
ies," condemning fine bindings, one of the 
few false dogmas uttered by the sprightly, 
entertaining author of Les Caracteres. Fine 
bindings not only preserve but beautify fine 
books; and to the sentiment of La Bruyere 
I prefer that of Jules Janin : " II faut a 
I'homme sage et studieux tin tome honor- 
able et digne de sa louange. " ("The wise 
and studious man should have a volume 
worthy of his praise.") 

In Edouard Rouveyre's instructive and 
beautifully-printed manual on bibliography, 
the question of bindings is summed up in 
a sentence, fine bindings naturally referring 
to books that are worthy of beautiful and 
permanent coverings: "Binding is to ty- 
pography what this is to the other arts ; the 
one transmits to posterity the works of the 
scholar, the other preserves the typographi- 
cal production for him. . . . The binding 
of the amateur," he continues, "should be 
rich without ostentation, solid without 
heaviness, always in harmony with the 
work that it adorns, of great finish in its 
workmanship, of exact execution in the 
smallest details, with neat lines, and a 
strongly conceived design."* 

* Connaissances Necessaires a un Bibliophile, par 
Edouard Rouveyre, Troisieme Edition. Paris, Ed. Rou- 
veyre et G. Blond, 1883, 2 vols. 






Magicians of the Shelves. 227 

"The binding of a book," the Right 
Honorable W. E. Gladstone succinctly ob- 
serves, "is the dress with which it walks 
out into the world. The paper, type, and 
ink are the body in which its soul is domi- 
ciled. And these three, soul, body, and 
habiliment, are a triad which ought to be 
adjusted to one another by the laws of har- 
mony and good sense." Nor should the 
book-lover neglect to carry out the rules 
relative to binding laid down by Octave 
Uzanne in his Caprices d'un Bibliophile: 
"A book should be bound according to its 
spirit, according to the epoch in which it 
was published, according to the value you 
attach to it and the use you expect to make 
of it ; it should announce itself by its exte- 
rior, by the gay, striking, lively, dull, som- 
ber, or variegated tone of its accoutre- 
ment." 

With regard to the book-cases them- 
selves, their height should depend upon 
that of the ceilings, and on the number of 
one's volumes. For classification and ref- 
erence, it is more convenient to have numer- 
ous small cases of similar or nearly similar 
size and the same general style of construc- 
tion than a few large cases in which every- 
thing is engulfed. With small or medium- 
sized receptacles, each one may contain vol- 
umes relating to certain departments or 
different languages, as the case may be; by 
15 



228 The Story of my House. 

this means a volume and its kindred may be 
readily found. Thus one, or a portion of 
one, may be devoted to bibliography, an- 
other to the philosophers, another to poeti- 
cal works, another to foreign literature, an- 
other to reference works, another to books 
relating to nature, art, etc. 

The style and color of the bindings, 
also, may subserve a similar purpose; as, 
for instance, the poets in yellow or orange, 
books on nature in olive, the philosophers 
in blue, the French classics in red, etc. 
Unless methodically arranged, even with a 
very small library, a volume is often diffi- 
cult to turn to when desired for immediate 
consultation, requiring tedious search, es- 
pecially if the volumes are arranged upon 
the shelves with respect to size and out- 
ward symmetry. This may be avoided by 
the use of small book-cases and a defined 
style of binding. I refer to the general 
style of binding; variety in bindings is 
always pleasing, and very many books one 
procures already bound and wishes to retain 
in the original covers. Books, moreover, 
which are in constant or frequent use 
should not be placed in too tender colors. 
Volumes become virtually lost and inaccess- 
ible in the vast walnut sarcophagi in which 
they are frequently entombed, and lose 
the attractive look they possess when more 
compactly enshrined. Above all things, 



Magicians of the Shelves. 229 

the book-case should be artistic, artistically 
plain, except for trie richness of the carving. 
Black walnut I should banish, unless em- 
ployed exclusively for somber old folios, to 
accentuate their antiquity. Neither the 
library nor the study should appear morose 
or exhale an atmosphere of gloom. 

In a room ten and a half to eleven feet 
high, five feet is a desirable height for the 
book-cases. Besides the drawers at the 
base, this will afford space for four rows of 
books, to include octavos, duodecimos, and 
smaller volumes. In some of the cases 
three shelves may be placed — the shelves, 
of course, should be shifting — to include 
folios, large quartos, and octavos. Where 
the ceilings are twelve feet high, six feet is 
a better proportion, this height affording 
five or four shelves, according to the size of 
the volumes. By leaving the top of the 
book-case twelve to thirteen inches wide, 
ample space will be allowed for additional 
small books, porcelains, and bric-a-brac. 
It must be borne in mind that tall book- 
cases, in addition to the inaccessibility of 
the volumes on the upper shelves, leave 
little if any space for pictures on the walls 
above them ; and that, though books assur- 
edly furnish and lend an air of refinement 
to an apartment, they still require the relief 
and complement of other decorative ob- 
jects. 



230 The Story of my House. 

The cultured business man who may 
have the taste but lacks the time for exten- 
sive reading, the average man or woman 
who reads for recreation, may derive more 
benefit from a small library comprised of the 
best books carefully chosen than from the 
average large library. " Quid prosunt in- 
numerabiles libri quorum dominus vix totd 
vita sua indices per legit?" ("Of what use 
is an innumerable quantity of volumes whose 
owner may scarcely read the titles during his 
lifetime ?") Seneca justly reasoned. It is not 
so much the dinner of innumerable courses 
as a few dishes well prepared. Except to 
those who read quickly and assimilate read- 
ily, the large library is apt to consist for the 
most part of "uncut edges" in the lay- 
man's sense of the term. 

A good library is rarely suddenly formed. 
Moreover, if it could be, it were not half as 
satisfactory as a library added to by degrees, 
the growth and gradual increase of years. 
Again, some of the works that were con- 
sidered a rare treat half a century since are 
no longer a treat to-day. They have be- 
come old-fashioned in the same sense as a 
garment. The critical eighteenth century 
essay in its entirety, the old style metaphys- 
ical airing of some pet hobby, or didactic 
wool-drawing now seem rather ponderous 
productions. At present one does not even 
care to read all of the joint productions of 



Magicians of the Shelves. 231 

Addison and Steele (particularly the latter's 
essays), an averment that would have 
placed one under a ban twenty years ago. 
Yet even in Johnson's day the Rambler was 
more extolled than perused, the publisher 
complaining that the encouragement as to 
sale was not in proportion to the raptures 
expressed by those who read it. 

With the increasing pyramids of books, 
selection must become proportionately more 
and more restricted. Equally is this the case 
with poetry. Many of the ancient bards still 
figure in the editions of the English poets 
— only to sun their gilded backs on the li- 
brary shelves and seldom have their pages 
turned. It were absurd to assert that the 
Spectator and numerous other productions 
of a former day will ever become closed 
volumes. Curiosity, and their fame also, 
would always cause them to be read by 
futurity did not their merit preclude the 
possibility of their ever sinking into obliv- 
ion. It is very probable, however, that at 
no distant day many of the immortals will 
exist in abridged editions. Some authors, 
like Montaigne, on the other hand, can 
never be cut down ; their redundancies and 
embroideries are their charm. 

To our forefathers time was more 
lenient than it is to us. Somehow the 
days and the nights were longer, and the 
old-time reader appeared to find more leisure 



232 The Story of my House. 

and a brighter oil with which to pursue his 
literary browsings and point his antitheses. 
" There is a certain want of ease about the 
old writers," Alexander Smith remarks 
(and I recall no one who has expressed it 
so musically before), "which has an irre- 
sistible charm. The language flows like a 
stream over a pebbled bed, with propulsion, 
eddy, and sweet recoil — the pebbles, if re- 
tarding movement, giving ring and dimple 
to the surface and breaking the whole into 
babbling music." 

"When I looked into one of these old 
volumes," Thoreau characteristically says, 
"it affected me like looking into an inac- 
cessible swamp, ten feet deep with sphag- 
num, where the monarchs of the forest, 
covered with mosses and stretched along 
the ground, were making haste to become 
peat. Those old books suggested a certain 
fertility, an Ohio soil, as if they were mak- 
ing a humus for new literatures to spring 
in. I heard the bellowing of bull-frogs 
and the hum of mosquitoes reverberating 
through the thick embossed covers when I 
had closed the book. Decayed literature 
makes the richest of all soils." 

In this age of hurry and concentration 
who has the time to wade through the hun- 
dred volumes of Voltaire ? It is, even a task 
to go through his anthology, Elite de Poe- 
sies Fugitives, in the pretty little two-vol- 



Magicians of the Shelves. 23} 

urne Cazin edition, there are so many more 
shells than pearls. But one's time is well 
repaid after all, if only for the sake of find- 
ing and holding one such exquisite bit of 
airy verse as M. Bernard's Le Hameau. Is 
it original, or a translation ? The German 
poet Gottfried Burger's Das Dorfchen and 
this are one and the same, except that the 
latter is somewhat condensed, though 
equally beautiful. Following M. Bernard's 
idyl is a panegyric in verse by Voltaire ad- 
dressed to M. Berger, "who sent him the 
preceding stanzas," Voltaire's tribute begin- 
ning: 

De ton Bernard 
J'aime l'esprit. 
C'est la peinture 
De la nature. 

Bernard, Berger, and Burger ; or Burger, 
Berger, and Bernard would at first sight 
seem to be in a tangle. But in rendering to 
Caesar the things that are Caesar's, 

I praise my dear 
Sweet village here, 

undoubtedly should be returned to the Ger- 
man poet. 

In the case of nearly every prolific au- 
thor some few volumes represent his finest 
thought. I grant every one has or should 
have a favorite author, one who stands to 
him on a higher pedestal than all others, — 
an author whom he reveres and loves, and 



234 The Story of my House. 

who must be read in every line that was 
the emanation of his brain. But for one to 
read every page of Thackeray, Bulwer, 
Goethe, Dumas, and the host of celebrated 
romancists, poets, essayists, and philoso- 
phers, delightful and instructive though 
they be, is a simple impossibility. 

To return to the change in literary taste, 
and to instance a marked example, consider 
Wilson, or Christopher North. " Fusty 
Christopher," Tennyson termed this pomp- 
ous arbiter elegantiarum. The tables have 
been turned since the editor of Blackwood 
reviled the poet-laureate, and the animus of 
the criticism on Tennyson might now be 
applied to its stultified author. What 
magazine of the present could be induced 
to publish North's rhapsodies ? An install- 
ment would seriously damage The Atlantic, 
Scribner's, or even Maga itself. How tire- 
some his ceaseless alliteration, his deluge of 
adjectives, his stream of similes, his invec- 
tive, his bathos ! 

Many portions of the Noctes, it is true, 
are marvels of imagination and erudition, 
and some of his angling conceits are worthy 
of Norman MacLeod. Others, especially 
his selections as collected and published by 
himself under the title of The Recreations, 
are crusted over with algae of self-conceit. 
It is the peacock who consciously struts. 
Pepys's reiterated "I " and quaint egotism 



Magicians of the Shelves. 235 

are never tiresome ; Wilson's pompous 
first person plural becomes a weariness. 
They used to give us Baxter's Saints' Rest to 
parse, in the olden school days, and I could 
not help but think that if the saints had 
such a horrible time, how fortunate it was 
we lived in a more advanced period. No 
doubt the schoolmaster might have given 
us worse books to parse ; and, unquestion- 
ably, we should be .duly grateful that The 
Recreations were not included. From the 
a priori to the a posteriori would have been 
so much harder sailing ! Has not even the 
long-spun panorama of The Seasons lost 
something of its charm ? Or, rather, should 
it not be read in an old edition ? 

Good editions of good books, though 
they may often be expensive, can not be 
too highly commended. One can turn to 
a page in inviting letterpress so much easier 
than to a page of an unattractive volume. 
The fine shades of meaning stand out more 
clearly, and the thought is revealed more 
intelligibly when clothed in fitting typo- 
graphical garb. Often it becomes a posi- 
tive labor to follow many a pleasing author 
in the small or worn types and poor pa- 
per with which the publisher mercilessly 
thrusts him into the world. The reader 
has virtually to work his passage through 
the pages and take frequent rests by the 
way. 



The Story of my House. 



Poor illustrating is even worse. Who 
may appreciate the beauties of The Talking 
Oak in the edition where Olivia is portrayed 
in the act of kissing a giant bole whose 
girth scarcely equals her own ? One must 
ever afterward associate an oak with a fat 
Olivia. Apparently the artist never read 
Sir Thomas Wyatt: 

A face that should content me wondrous well 
Should not be fair, but lovely to behold, 

or William Browne : 

What best I lov'de was beauty of the mind, 
And that lodgd in a Temple truely faire. 

How dreadful, too, are many of the works 
illustrated by Cruikshank and Crowquill, 
which some profess to set such store by 
because they are held at such a premium 
by the book dealers ! 

Nearly as reprehensible as poor illus- 
trating is pilloring the unfortunate author 
in the stocks of some atrocious color that 
must develop a cataract if gazed at long and 
fixedly. " I have been well-nigh ruined by 
the binder!" exclaimed one of the bright 
writers and literarians of the day ; and be- 
fore attempting to read one of his most en- 
tertaining volumes I stripped it of its fright- 
ful garb and clothed it in becoming attire. 
Otherwise one might not follow the ideas, the 
glaring blue and hideous figure of the origi- 
nal cover asserted themselves so strongly. 



Magicians of the Shelves. 237 

One should always endeavor to procure 
a good edition to start with ; it is inconven- 
ient to change editions. You come to as- 
sociate certain favorite passages of a well- 
conned author with their place upon certain 
pages, so that you may instantly turn to 
them. The passages look strange to you 
in strange types, and you almost require to 
be introduced anew. With a change of 
page the mere thought itself remains the 
same, only it seems to have altered its ex- 
pression. Let those who will, prate about 
a thought being a thought wherever it may 
exist. Some thoughts there are so airy and 
delicate they require to be read by one's 
self— they lose a portion of their fragrance 
if repeated or obtained second hand. They 
should be savored by the eye and heard 
only by the inner ear. "The dark line" 
of the sun-dial "stealing imperceptibly on 
— for sweet plants and flowers to spring 
by, for the birds to apportion their silver 
warblings by, for flocks to pasture and be 
led to fold by" — is more sharply defined 
upon the page of The Old Benchers of the 
Inner Temple, the page where I first saw 
it, than it can ever appear to me upon any 
other page. Again, many flowers one en- 
joys most upon the uncut stalk. They may 
not be plucked and retain the full aroma 
they distill amid their natural surroundings. 
So that a quoted sentence from want of 



2)8 The Story of my House. 

connection often loses much of the charm 
it presents upon the author's page. And 
yet, on the other hand, quotation, when judi- 
ciously employed, not unfrequently places 
the author quoted in his most favorable 
light, while forming equally a pleasing com- 
plement to the page of the writer himself. 
Montaigne's fleurons of citation, woven 
from his scholastic and inexhaustible loom, 
what were the Essays without them? — 
limpid brooks and springs ever pouring 
their sparkling waters into the meandering, 
smooth-flowing river of the text. Merely 
by the change of type, quotation relieves 
the monotony of the page, while, with 
great writers, apt citation lends added em- 
phasis and beauty to the thought, just as 
the art of damascening enriches a fine 
blade. 

Good editions are everything in reading. 
Even the fragrant mint of Lamb possesses 
a heightened pungency to me when gath- 
ered along the cool, broad margins of a Lon- 
don imprint. Not only the mind through 
the personality or charm of the thought ex- 
pressed, and the ear through the harmony 
and lucidness of the style with which it is 
uttered ; but equally the eye, in the outward 
garb with which the thought is clothed, 
should be gratified in reading a beautiful 
book. The printer it is who contributes 
the finishing touches and heightens the re- 



Magicians of the Shelves. 239 

flective surface. Elia's buoyant, playful 
graces have, perhaps, received their most 
exquisite and appropriate setting in the two 
little volumes of the Temple Library, print- 
ed by the Chiswick press, the smaller being 
preferable to the large paper edition. 

It is pleasant to have some authors both 
in an early and a late edition. If I desire 
the notes, the full-page illustrations, and an 
amplified text, I choose the edition of The 
Complete Angler illustrated by Stothard 
and Inskipp and annotated by Sir Harris 
Nicholas. If I wish to get still nearer Wal- 
ton — to hear more plainly his birds con- 
tending with the echo, to pluck his culver- 
kees and ladysmocks, to smell his prim- 
roses, and admire the very "shape and 
enameled color of the trout it joyed him 
so to look upon," I read him in the old 
spelling and old font of the fac-simile re- 
print of the first edition. Moreover, for the 
sake of making comparisons, it is often de- 
sirable to have an early as well as a late 
edition of a favorite author. So subtle, in- 
deed, are the niceties of reading they may 
scarcely be defined. How delightful the 
mere cutting of the edges of the book one 
longs to read, and the occasional dip into 
the pages as you turn the leaves ! 

Of a few favorite authors it is desirable to 
possess two copies, one in an inexpensive 
form to take when traveling. A trunk- 



240 The Story of my House. 

maker is yet to appear who will contrive an 
apartment that will enable one to pack books 
so they may receive no possible injury — the 
one thing Addison's Trunk-maker of the 
Upper Gallery neglected. Besides, apart 
from the friction in its receptacle, a valuable 
book is liable to other injuries, or loss while 
traveling. The traveling volume should be 
small, securely bound, light in the hand, 
and not too bulky for the pocket. 

But an old book of all books for true de- 
light! The pleasure of reading Chaucer or 
Spenser is doubled by the types and the as- 
sociations of the past. The foxed and faded 
pages are like the rust on antique bronzes, 
the lichens on an old wall. 

In the preface to Wheatley's The Dedi- 
cation of Books reference is made to this 
fascination which is conferred by an ancient 
font upon an ancient page. "There is," 
remarks the author, " a delicate flavor of 
antiquity and a certain quaint charm in the 
old print of the books from which many of 
the dedications have been drawn that seems 
to depart when the same sentences are 
printed in modern type, and we are apt 
sometimes to wonder what it was that we 
originally admired. The bouquet has fled 
while we were in the act of removing the 
cork from the bottle." Present, too, with 
the charm of the olden page itself is the 
thought of who may have first turned the 



Magicians of the Shelves. 241 

pages when the book you are reading was 
in its fresh and spotless leaf, and whose 
hand it was that traced the annotations 
which embroider its margins. 

To revert in parentheses to the sun-dial, 
Mrs. Gatty's monograph, recently repub- 
lished and extended,* contains thousands 
of mottoes and references to the clock of 
nature taken from numerous languages, but 
none equal to Lamb's apostrophe. So far 
as references to the passage of time are 
concerned, there can be none more ex- 
pressive than Ronsard's lines : 

Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, madame! 
Las! le temps non: mais nous nous en allons.f 

Singularly, the beautiful sonnet in which 
these lines occur was one which had been 
cast aside by Ronsard from the later edi- 
tions of his works, and was only reprinted 
in Buon's edition of 1609. Still more singu- 
lar it seems that the ''Prince of Poets" 
should have remained comparatively un- 
appreciated for two centuries until reintro- 
duced by St. Beuve. Am I mistaken in 
thinking there is a pronounced resemblance 

* The Book of Sun-Dials. Collected by Mrs. Alfred 
Gatty. New and enlarged edition London: George 
Bell and Sons, 1889. Pp. viii, 502. 

f Time goes, you say? Ah, no! 

Alas, Time stays, we go! 

(Austin Dobson's translation.) 



242 The Story of my House. 

between this sonnet and Shakespeare's 
' ' When I do count the clock that tells the 
time " ? 

Chaucer's — 

For tho' we sleep, or wake, or rome, or ride, 
Ay fleeth the time, it will no man abide, 

and Spenser's — 

Make hast, therefore, sweet Love, whilst it is prime, 
For none can call again the passed time, 

are as fine as any of the allusions by the 
classic poets who have festooned and inter- 
twined the passing hour with rosebuds and 
asphodels. 

I find the Book of Sun-Dials a delightful 
volume to take up when in a meditative 
mood. It needs, withal, a still room and 
a still hour to be read in, an environing 
quietness like the whisper of the gnomon 
itself. Then rambling through the pages, 
the present becomes absorbed by the past 
as you muse over the icons of the dials and 
moralize upon the quaint inscriptions. 
Transcribed in large Italic type, the mottoes 
stand out with the vividness of an epitaph 
graven upon a tomb, voices from posterity 
preaching from the perennial text : 

As Time And Houres Passeth Awaye 
So Doeth The Life Of Man Decaye. 

Often as you contemplate the time-posts 
and their intaglios do they absorb the at- 



Magicians of the Shelves. 243 

tention afresh, casting new shades of mean- 
ing from the sentient styles. They trans- 
port you into gardens where old-fashioned 
flowers and historic yew-trees grow, they 
conduct you through old churchyards among 
neglected graves, they deliver their homilies 
from weather-beaten walls, and their pathos 
appeals from many an ancient sanctuary 
and moss-grown lintel. How noiselessly, 
how serenely they mark the flight of time ! 
It is Time itself inaudibly counting the 
hours ; the day suavely balancing its silent 
periods. They mirror primitive time, re- 
moved from the present turmoil, when the 
sun was the pendulum and the shadow the 
index-hand. Associated with Nature by 
ties the most endearing, by the golden sun- 
shine, the murmuring breeze, and the songs 
of birds, the dial, becomes, as it were, a re- 
flective facet of external Nature in her gra- 
cious moods, its very shadow representing 
sunlight, the sunlight absent where the 
shadow is not. The sun-dial has molded 
itself to grace, and with rare exceptions its 
mottoes are happily chosen, attesting hours 
of meditation in forming an epigram or 
shaping a poetic fancy to blend with the 
shifting shadow. Certainly many of the 
sentiments collated in the monograph re- 
ferred to are of more than passing interest. 
Their pathos and their quaintness set one 
dreaming. 
16 



244 The Story of my House. 

Among the many inscriptions which ar- 
rested me while first turning the leaves, a 
few may be appended without, I trust, 
fatiguing the reader. Let her or him mor- 
alize a moment, and consider life from the 
standpoint of the dial, now grave, now gay ; 
now lively, now severe. Though Time 
hurries mankind it has apparently not hur- 
ried the dials in choosing their inscriptions. 
It is rather a case of festina lente than hora 
fugit. Some are as terse as an epigram 
of Martial or a proverb from Job; others 
sweet as a hymn of Watts or a stanza from 
The Temple. Thus, light and shadow are 
felicitously blended in the tale a dial tells 
on a house at Wadsley, near Sheffield, the 
moralist preaching from a niche in the wall : 

Of Shade And Sunshine For Each Hour 

See Here A Measure Made: 
Then Wonder Not If Life Consist 

Of Sunshine And Of Shade. 

I Mark The Moments Trod For 
Good Or 111 

has been the burden of the vertical dial at 
the priory, Warwick, since 1556. 

Lifes But A Shadow 

Mans But Dust 
This Dyall Sayes 

Dy All We Must 

says the dial on the Church of All Saints, 
Winkleigh, Devon. 



Magicians of the Shelves. 245 

I Am A Shadow, So Art Thou 
I Mark Time, Dost Thou ? 

is inscribed on an old horologium in the Grey 
Friars' churchyard, Sterling. 

Sweetly fragrant are the lines incised on 
the four sides of a stone dial in a flower 
garden at South Windleham : 

I Stand Amid Ye Summere Flowers 
To Tell Ye Passage Of Ye Houres. 
When Winter Steals Ye Flowers Awaye 
I Tell Ye Passinge Of Their Daye. 
O Man Whose Flesh Is But As Grasse 
Like Summere Floweres Thy Life Shall Passe. 
Whiles Tyme Is Thine Laye Up In Store 
And Thou Shalt Live For Ever More. 

Pretty, also, are the lines by James Mont- 
gomery beneath a vertical dial in Burnes- 
ton, Yorkshire: 

Time From The Church Tower Cries To You And Me, 

Upon This Moment Hangs Eternity: 

The Dial's Index And The Belfry's Chime 

To Eye And Ear Confirm This Truth Of Time. 

Prepare To Meet It; Death Will Not Delay; 

Take Then Thy Saviour's Warning — Watch And Pray ! 

One of the mottoes has an echo of Sidney : 

Time As He Passes Us Has A Dove's Wing 
Unsoiled And Swift, And Of A Silken Sound. 

"The Night Cometh" is neatly amplified 
upon a plate that supports a cross sun-dial 
on a stone pedestal upon the terrace of the 
hospital of St. Cross, Rugby : 



246 The Story of my House. 

The Passing Shadows Which The Sunbeams Throw 
Athwart This Cross, Time's Hastening Foot -Steps 

Show; 
Warned By Their Teaching Work Ere Day Be O'er, 
Soon Comes The Night Wher. Man Can Work No 

More. 

One motto reads Unam Time (Fear one 
hour) ; another, Unam Timeo (One hour I 
fear). Two others read, Heu Quaerimus 
Umbram, Heu Patimus Umbram (Alas ! we 
pursue a shadow), (Alas ! we endure the 
shadow). Eheu Fugaces is marked upon a 
Yorkshire plate, and Labuntur Anni on 
Burnham Church, Somerset. The shortest 
mottoes are Redeme, J'avance, Remember, 
Irrevocable. A beautiful stone sun-dial still 
casts its shadow in the old garden of Gilbert 
White, and is figured in Macmillan's edition 
of the Natural History of Selborne. This is 
not mentioned in Mrs. Gatty's comprehen- 
sive work, and I can not determine from 
the illustration whether it bears a motto. 
Each To His Task, taken from White's Invi- 
tation would be an appropriate inscrip- 
tion. 

One of the quaintest inscriptions men- 
tioned in the Book of Sun-Dials is that which 
looks from the wall of a church at Argenti- 
ne, near Vallouse. It was scarcely com- 
posed in an hour, and loses much in the 
translation : 

Cette Montre Par Son Ombre Montre 
Que Comme L'Ombre Passent Nos Jours. 



Magicians of the Shelves. 247 

(This marker marks by its shadow that 
our days pass away like a shadow). 

There is much of moral coloring in these 
two lines : 

Haste Traveller, The Sun Is Sinking Low 
He Shall Return Again, But Never Thou. 

And is this not altogether lovely ? 

Give God Thy Heart, Thy Hopes, Thy Gifts, Thy Gold, 
The Day Wears On, The Times Are Waxing Old. 

And so one might go on quoting the 
old moral, shadowed by different texts. 
Perhaps Sterne expresses it as pithily as 
any epigrammatist, "life" being but an- 
other term for time: "What is the life of 
man ! Is it not to shift from side to side ? 
from sorrow to sorrow ? to button up one 
cause of vexation, and unbutton another ? " 
But Sterne deals with the shadow only, 
while the gnomon of the dial presents its 
side of sunshine equally with its side of 
shade, however somber the tone of the in- 
scription. Doubtless Nature preaches more 
truly than man. Life is not all composed 
of shadow, nor all of sunshine ; and if we 
but cultivate the spirit of contentment, pos- 
sibly we have solved its sternest problem. 

But may contentment, after all, be had 
for the striving? "Whatever it be that 
falleth into our knowledge and jouissance," 
reasons Montaigne in the fifty-third chapter 
of the First Book, "we finde it doth not 



248 The Story of my House. 

satisfie us, and we still follow and gape after 
future, uncertaine, and unknowne things, 
because the present and knowne please us 
not, and doe not satisfie us. Not (as I 
thinke) because they have not sufficiently 
wherewith to satiate and please us, but the 
reason is, that we apprehend and seize on 
them with an unruly, disordered, and a 
diseased taste and hold-fast." And, again, 
in the twelfth chapter of the Second Book : 
"All of the Philosophers of all the sects that 
ever were doe generally agree on this point, 
that the chiefest felicitie, or summum bonum, 
consisteth in the peace and tranquillitie of 
the soul and bodie : — but where shall we 
find it?" 

Somewhere, slumbering upon the 
shelves, there exists a golden book of a for- 
mer century, written by a learned French 
philosopher-pantologist, entitled L'Art de se 
rendre heureux par les Songes (The Art of 
rendering one's self happy by Dreams). A 
unique volume and the labor of a lifetime, 
its present owner and the fortunate pos- 
sessor of the secret has never been discov- 
ered; and, alas! a reprint does not exist. 
Contentment — is this but another name for 
Illusion ? — is a bird of passage who, soaring 
high in the empyrean, must be secured on 
the wing. Numberless those who would 
ensnare him, and innumerable the lures set 
to turn his evasive pinion. But he flies not 



Magicians of the Shelves. 249 

in flocks; and, dimly outlined against the 
distant sky, he is ever flitting onward, far 
out of range. Some one, farther on, who 
seeks him not, perchance looks serenely 
upward, and unconsciously charms him 

down 

My fair and gracious reader, is it you ? 




XIII. 

AUTHORS AND READERS. 

There must be both a judgment and a fervor; a dis- 
crimination and a boyish eagerness ; and (with all due 
humility) something of a point of contact between au- 
thors worth reading and the reader. — Leigh Hunt, 
My Books. 

A truly good book is something as natural and as 
unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect as a 
wild flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in 
the jungles of the East. — Thoreau. 




certain selfish satisfaction I en- 
joy in reading a fine limited edi- 
tion of a classic, or a choice 
work that is difficult to procure. 
It is like possessing a gem of an 
uncommon color, a piece of old Chinese 
glaze, or any rare art object. If the work 
itself possess intrinsic value I am sure of my 
investment, while I rejoice in its attractive 
guise. Reading thus becomes more than 
a pleasure ; it is an exquisite luxury. I 
marvel who secures all the "number i's" 
of the large-paper editions. Some biblio- 
taphe must have a monumental collection, 
for nobody ever sees one. 



Authors and Headers. 251 

"The passion for first editions, the pur- 
est of all passions," some one remarks. I 
confess I do not share this passion in its in- 
tensity, in all cases, unless the first edition 
be superior in letterpress or form, or a later 
edition has been altered, condensed, or en- 
larged to its disadvantage. The classics in 
first editions, and the "old melodious lays" 
in first folios by all means, if you can afford 
and procure them ; Gibbon, Macaulay, Scott, 
Dickens, and the rest of the historians and 
novelists in the easiest, most attractive page 
to read and hold in the hand, whatever the 
edition. This with reference to literature 
proper, and not to scientific works, of which 
latter the latest edition is naturally to be 
preferred. 

I sometimes find myself picturing the 
author behind the page. Lang and Dob- 
son, are they as merry as the songs they 
sing ? Phil Robinson, is he half so pleas- 
ant a companion in the flesh as on the 
printed page? Bullen, who edits the old 
poets with such consummate taste, is he as 
jolly as the Elizabethan lyrics ever swarm- 
ing on the tip of his tongue ? Higginson, 
so tender and musical in his polished prose. 
I wonder does he lose his temper when the 
sauce piquante proves a failure ? The brill- 
iant, entertaining philosopher of A Club of 
One, is he philosophical enough to eschew 
colchicum for his gout ; and, I marvel, is 



252 The Story of my House. 

he enrolled among the Brotherhood of the 
Merry Eye ? 

Perhaps the author is most charming, 
for the most part, between the covers. On 
paper he is always on his good behavior, 
his personal facets shaped so as to catch the 
most favorable light. Knowing him and 
meeting him in every-day life you might 
find him cold, arrogant, opinionated — an 
altogether disagreeable companion. For- 
getful of the flight of time, he might be 
prone to argument or backbiting. He 
might be deaf or color-blind, and always 
late at his engagements. He might be 
constantly straddling a hobby-horse. He 
might be an incorrigible whistler, or possess 
an ungovernable temper. All his petty 
weaknesses and foibles he conceals, or tries 
to conceal, on the printed page. 

Thus, Joseph Boulmier: 

Oui, les hommes sont laids, mais leurs csuvres sont 
belles; 

Les hommes sont mechants, mais leurs livres sont bons. 
Men are unlovely, but their works are fair — 
Ay, men are evil, but their books are good. 

If, as has been asserted, he is the best au- 
thor who gives the reader the most knowl- 
edge and takes from him the least time, 
surely the olive crown should be awarded 
the composers of the compilations, the 
digests, and the anthologies, often the fruit 
of decades spent in poring over manu- 



Authors and Readers. 253 

scripts and print. Little do we consider 
the pains they have cost. What an amount 
of rummaging through faded manuscripts, 
what ransacking of musty folios and plod- 
ding through by-ways of the past has it 
not required to produce Bullen's smiling 
volumes from the song-books, masques, 
and pageants of the Elizabethan Age, and 
his other rarer anthologies, Speculum Aman- 
tis and Musa Proterva. The works them- 
selves of very many of the authors quoted 
would be a veritable labor to wade through, 
with few fragrant flowers of poesy to per- 
fume the way. All this the compiler spares 
us, and with catholic taste gathers a blos- 
som here and a blossom there from the vast 
fields of little-known song. Equally does 
Mr. Bullen deserve the thanks of every 
lover of lyric poetry for his collection of 
Campion's works, and the Chiswick press 
the tribute of all admirers of beautiful print- 
ing for the frame in which Campion's 
"golden cadence " has been set. 

By reading Hazlitt's Gleanings in Old 
Garden Literature I am saved the fatigue of 
perusing countless uninteresting tomes on 
the subject. He has extracted the honey 
for me from innumerable flowers. Yet my 
Parkinson, my Gerarde, my Evelyn, my 
Bacon I must read between the lines my- 
self; it is to the dull books he has been the 
bee for me. To gather the sweets is often 



254 The Story of my House. 

a difficult and always a laborious task. Not 
these plodding compilers, the class who are 
referred to in the wise old precept, the 
source of which I have never been able to 
trace: "Those who do not practice what 
they preach resemble those sign-posts in 
the country which point out the weary way 
to the traveler without taking the trouble 
of traversing it themselves." 

Without doubt, among the most beloved 
of books are those written for pure love of 
the beautiful, distinct from literary ambition 
or posthumous fame, especially when to 
this is added a sympathetic, lucid, and un- 
conscious style, such as we love to linger 
over in The Complete Angler or White's 
Selborne. Walton himself has epitomized 
this charm in a line introductory to his an- 
gling idyl: "I wish the reader also to take 
notice that in the writing of it I have made 
myself a recreation of a recreation." 

Johnson has said books that you may car- 
ry to the fire and hold readily in your hand 
are the most useful, after all. Before John- 
son, and long before printing was dreamed 
of, an old Greek proverb held that a great 
book was a great evil, and Martial wrote: 

Buy books that but one hand engage, 
In parchment bound, with tiny page. 

Assuredly, the little book is a delight. It is 
a joy in the hand when well bound, and 



Authors and Readers. 255 

may serve to take the place of fire-arms in 
a public conveyance where one otherwise 
might find himself at the mercy of an un- 
congenial or too loquacious passenger. But 
the life of the library were dull were it con- 
fined to the 18 and 24 mos. Let each 
book and each subject have its appropriate 
setting, and let there be variety of sizes. 
The majesty of the shelves were fled with- 
out the thick quarto and tall old folio. 

Apart from De Bury, Dibdin, Disraeli, 
Burton, Didot, Janin, the bibliophile Jacob, 
and other universally known bibliographi- 
cal writers, there are innumerable pleasant 
books on books. Of such, in addition to 
those previously alluded to, may be speci- 
fied Lang's Books and Bookmen and The 
Library ; The Pleasures of a Bookworm and 
The Diversions of a Bookworm, by J. Rog- 
ers Rees, delightfully written volumes at- 
tractively printed by Elliott Stock; Alexan- 
der Ireland's Book -Lover's Enchiridion; 
Saunder's • The Story of Some Famous 
Books ; Wheatley's The Dedication of 
Books, and How to form a Library, the 
latter three volumes likewise daintily print- 
ed by Elliott Stock in the series of The 
Book-Lovers' Library. 

In A Club Corner, by A. P. Russell, a vol- 
ume previously mentioned, is largely de- 
voted to books and authors. A store-house 
of literary and bibliographical information 



256 The Story of my House. 

exists between the covers of Library Notes, 
and Characteristics, by the same author. 
Books and how to use Them is the title of 
an instructive and entertaining small duo- 
decimo by J. C. Van Dyke, librarian of the 
Sage Library, New Brunswick, N. J., a 
writer deep versed in books, but not shal- 
low in himself. Brander Mathews's Ballads 
of Books, or Lang's recast of this volume, 
is a most excellently chosen collection of 
poems relating to books. Every one will 
read with pleasure Percy Fitzgerald's The 
Book Fancier, or the Romance of Book- 
Collecting, a work replete with curious in- 
formation. The French scholar has a host 
of kindred works to choose from, all written 
de cosur ; for in France the passion for 
books, book-collecting, fine letterpress, and 
fine bindings exists to a greater degree 
than anywhere else. It was a Frenchman, 
the famed bouquineur Nodier, who worried 
through life without a copy of Virgil "be- 
cause he could not succeed in finding the 
ideal Virgil of his dreams." 

What instructive, sparkling volumes are 
these: L'Enfer du Bibliophile, Mes Livres, 
Connaissances Necessaires a un Bibliophile, 
Derome's Le Luxe des Livres and the two 
beautifully printed and entertaining vol- 
umes, Causeries d'un Ami des Livres, Le 
Petit's L'Art d' Aimer les Livres, Peignot's 
Manuel du Bibliophile, Octave Uzanne's 



Authors and Readers. 257 

Caprices d'un Bibliophile, Mouravit's Petite 
Bibliotheque d'Amateur, Jacob's Les Ama- 
teurs de Vieux Livres, and how many 
more! 

I know of no more fascinating volume 
of its class, however, than De Resbecq's 
Voyages Litteraires sur les Quais de Paris, 
Paris, A. Durand, 1857. The contents are 
in the form of letters from an indefatigable 
hunter of the book-stalls along the Seine to 
a fellow-bibliophile in the provinces. Daily, 
through summer's sun and winter's cold, 
he continues the chase, scenting the spoils 
of the stalls like a harrier beating the ground 
for game, chatting with the book dealers, 
and philosophizing as he scans the volumes. 
Among the many prizes which persistent 
foragings secured was a copy of that rarest 
of the Elzevirs, the Pastissier Francois. 
The volume had been denuded of its cov- 
ers, but had the engraved title-page, the 
celebrated scene de cuisine with the range, 
the tables, the cooks, and the fowls entirely 
intact. "The box in which this jewel re- 
posed, its interior in perfect preservation, 
contained no price-mark. 

" ' How much ? ' said I to the merchant. 

"'Well, for you, six sous; is it too 
dear ? " 

I recall few more delightful books for 
the bibliophile than Juies Richard's beauti- 
fully printed small volume L'Art de Former 



258 The Story of my House. 

une Bibliotheque, published by Edouard 
Rouveyre, Paris, 1883. His advice to the 
collector, which terminates the preface, is 
well worth transcribing : 

"Always distrust your enthusiasm. 

"Distrust the enormous prices at which 
certain original editions of secondary authors 
are quoted. For acknowledged genius one 
can afford to pay generously, but for the 
others, how many disappointments the fut- 
ure has in store ! 

"Never pay a high price for a book you 
do not know. 

' ' Verify the titles, the pagination, the 
tables, and count the plates, if it is an illus- 
trated book. 

" The same observation holds good for 
editions on extraordinary paper of books 
absolutely ordinary. Whatman and vellum 
require to be well placed in order to sustain 
their value. 

"One knows when he begins to col- 
lect, one never knows when he will cease; 
therein consists the pleasure." 

A work of much interest is that of Phi- 
lomeste Junior (Gustave Brunet), published 
in four small brochure volumes severally 
entitled La Bibliomanie en 1878, 1880, 1881, 
1883, ou Bibliographie Retrospective des 
Abdications les Plus Remarquables faites 
cette Annee, et de la Valeur primitive de ces 
Ouvrages. It is in France that bibliomania 



Authors and Readers. 259 

seems to have reached its apotheosis. La 
Bibliomanie furnishes some interesting facts 
with regard to the steady advance in the 
prices of certain classes of French books. 
''Fashion dictates her laws for the choice 
of books as for the toilet of fashionable 
ladies; they are without appeal." To be 
the happy possessor of a cabinet in which 
are enshrined a dozen tomes of unexcep- 
tional condition, illustrated by celebrated 
eighteenth-century artists like Eisen, Grave- 
lot, Moreau, Marillier, and bound by Du 
Seuil, Padeloup, Derome, or Trautz, calls 
for an elastic portemonnaie. 

To cite a few examples of the advance 
in French books, paralleled also in English 
books, a copy of Manon Lescaut (1753) 
sold in 1839 for 109 frs., in 1870 for 355 
frs., in 1875 for 1,335 frs. The edition 
of Montaigne's Essays: Bourdens, S. Mil- 
langes, 1580, two parts in one octavo vol., 
sold for 24 frs., in 1784. The same copy 
recently sold for 2,060 frs. Another edi- 
tion of the Essays, 1725, 3 vols. 4to, with 
the arms of the Marechal de Luxembourg, 
brought 2,900 frs. for the "arms." Still 
another edition, Paris, 1669, 3 vols., i2mo, 
a poor edition, brought 1,900 frs. at the 
Cormon sale, Paris, 1883. It had the 
stamp of the golden fleece, the insignia of 
Longpierre, a mediocre poet, and the pur- 
chaser paid for the fleece. The edition of 
17 



260 The Story of my House. 

1595, Paris, chez A. l'Angelier, 1 vol., in- 
fol. veau, brought 1,100 frs., in 188 1. A 
"clean and sound copy " of this edition in 
the original calf was quoted in a recent 
London catalogue at £12 125., another Lon- 
don dealer pricing a copy of the same edi- 
tion soon afterward at £60. 

The edition of 1 588, Paris, Abel l'Ange- 
lier, in 4, mar., Du Seuil, was recently 
quoted by Morgand who is termed la 
bourse des livres, at 4,000 frs. This was 
the last edition published during the author's 
lifetime, and the first to contain the third 
book. It was marked on the frontispiece 
"fifth edition," though only three are 
known to have preceded it. The library 
of Bordeaux possesses an example of this 
edition filled with annotations and correc- 
tions by the hand of Montaigne. Up to the 
present time, no editor of the Essais has 
availed himself of these resources, of ines- 
timable value from the point of view of the 
study of the text of Montaigne. It would 
be of more than passing interest to know 
whether in these corrections the author 
mitigated his observation with regard to 
authors correcting their work. 

A copy of the Pastissier Francois, 
bound by Trautz, was purchased not long 
since by a French amateur for 4,100 frs. 
In 1883 a copy sold for 3,100 frs., at the 
sale of M. Delestre-Cormon, Paris. "This 



Authors and Readers. 261 

broche copy, uncut (extremely rare in this 
condition), cost its owner 10,000 frs. ; it 
has suffered a justifiable reduction. De- 
spite the entire absence of interest it pre- 
sents, this volume being the least known of 
the Elzevir collection, it has often obtained 
enormous prices, but they are not sustained ; 
it has been recognized that its rarity has 
been exaggerated." 

Among the numerous causes, especially 
in France, which operate in the value of a 
volume are previous distinguished owner- 
ship, and the garb of an illustrious binder. 
In books the habit frequently makes the 
"monk." It is sufficient for a mediocre 
work to be emblazoned with the crest of 
Pompadour or to have been fingered by Du 
Barry to make it worth its weight in gold. 
All their legeretes are freely forgiven by the 
bibliophile in view of the lovely bindings 
with which they clothed their books. Of 
recent years, as is well known, the Greek 
and Latin classics have found far less favor 
than they did a few years since. In France, 
and equally in England, the craze is for first 
editions of standard works, for rare works, 
for works formerly belonging to some dis- 
tinguished personage, for rare or beautiful 
bindings, and for special beauty of letter- 
press or illustration. 

A late illustrated catalogue, issued by 
Bouton, the New York bookseller, fur- 



262 The Story of my House. 

nishes some interesting facts with regard to 
the increase in the price of books in this 
country. If we consider the rapidly ad- 
vancing taste for literature in America, it is 
safe to predict that it will not be long be- 
fore rare and valuable books will be as gen- 
erally sought for here as they are in France 
and England, and become as well distrib- 
uted as are the choice treasures of the world 
of art which find the highest competition in 
the metropolis of the New World. 

Reviewing the book trade of the past 
thirty years, a retrospect shows that year by 
year the competition for rare and standard 
books has become more keen and the older 
ones necessarily more and more difficult to 
procure. "In the English book-centers," 
says the reviewer, "besides a large home 
demand, the purchases for the United States 
and the English colonies keep up a steady 
stream outward, and first editions must 
sooner or later become unattainable, as they 
will ultimately find a place in public institu- 
tions." Comparing the prices quoted in 
early catalogues with those of to-day, for 
instance, a copy of the Abbottsford edition 
of Scott's works, 17 vols., handsomely 
whole-bound, priced twenty -five years 
since at $125, is now priced at $225. The 
Pickering Chaucer, then priced at $10, is 
now held at $30. Major Walpole's Anec- 
dotes, priced $22. 50, is in the present cata- 



Authors and Readers. 26 3 

logue at $75. Rowlandson's Dance of 
Death at $6.50 and the Dance of Life at 
$1.75 have advanced to $75, for the three 
volumes. In catalogue No. 2 a fine copy 
of Purchas's Pilgrims is quoted at $175. A 
similar copy would now command $500. 
In Catalogue No. 3 a fine copy of the Nu- 
remberg Chronicle is priced at $35 ; in the 
present catalogue a copy is priced $150. 
based upon an experience of over thirty 
years, the reviewer asserts that, however 
fashion may change and this or that class 
of books come into or pass out of vogue, 
good sterling books of real merit will 
always be in demand, while the first edi- 
tions of the works of great writers will 
continue to rise steadily in value, and will 
be prized as long as the English language is 
spoken. 

La chasse aux bouquins is not without 
its disappointments and surprises. Time 
and again one misses the mark, finally to 
secure a rare prize. A captivating title is 
not always a safe target. Appearances are 
deceitful in book-titles, and the old book 
catalogues have very winning ways. The 
two bound volumes of Les Trois Mousque- 
taires, which I picked up in a book-stall 
along the quay at Paris years ago, con- 
tained a pencil drawing of Porthos inserted 
between the fly-leaf and title-page of Vol- 
ume I, worth a hundred times their cost. 



264 The Story of my House. 

Fortunately, they had escaped De Resbecq. 
Whether Edouard Olin, the artist whose 
name figures below, ever exhibited a pict- 
ure in the Salon subsequently, I do not 
know. But his Porthos is a marvel of con- 
ception and execution that would have de- 
lighted Dumas and that would honor De- 
taille. 

A German catalogue was the means of 
procuring me, at half the original cost of the 
volume, a clean and perfect copy of Joseph 
Boulmier's Rimes Loyales. Paris: Poulet- 
Malassis et De Brosse, 1857. The copy con- 
tains on the false title the author's ex dono 
to Mademoiselle Andrea Bourgeois, and on 
the reverse of the title-page, in the same 
singularly neat handwriting, signed "J. B.," 
is a poem of six stanzas, scarcely exceeded 
in beauty and finish by any from the pen 
of the author of Rimes Loyales or Les Villa- 
nelles. The lines are entitled Du Haut de 
Montmartre, the first and sixth stanzas be- 
ing identical, and reading as follows : 

L'aigle n'habite pas ail fond de la vallee 

II choisit pour son aire une cime isolee, 

Et c'est de la qu'il part, libre et capricieux. 

Le poete est semblable a l'aigle magnanime: 

II aime les hauteurs ou l'air vif le ranime, 

Ou, plus loin de la terre, il est plus pres des cieux. 

A friend and Tom Folio, who devours 
the old book catalogues, saw this advertise- 
ment a short time since in an English pam- 



Authors and Readers. 265 

phlet : " Machiavelli (Nicolo). Opere, n 
vols., 4to, whole bound russia extra, gilt 
edges, with portrait, printed throughout on 
blue paper (only eight copies so made), a 
most superb set. Milan, 18 10. . . . £4." 
He cabled for it and secured it. It proved 
a blue diamond. Within a week after re- 
ceiving it he was offered two hundred dol- 
lars for the work. Within a fortnight he 
disposed of it for three hundred dollars, a 
sufficient advance to make a large addition 
to his library. 

Many tempting and deceptive titles oc- 
cur under the heading of "Curious" and 
"Facetiae," but experience will cause one 
to fight shy of catching titles and annota- 
tions unless one knows the work to be 
meritorious. Frequently the gold is in the 
tooling, and the pure ore concealed beneath 
an unattractive cover. Perhaps the wind- 
falls are more than offset by the disappoint- 
ments. Inviting volume after inviting vol- 
ume will present itself when one is not in 
the humor, thrusting itself before you in the 
book-stalls and auction sales, mutely ap- 
pealing to you to become its possessor, only 
to elude you when you earnestly desire it 

But auction sales are dangerous, and are 
apt to lead to lapses and excesses that one 
would not commit in calmer moments. 
There it is difficult to decide dispassionately, 
while the lots invariably bring far higher 



266 The Story of my House. 

prices than if obtained in the ordinary way. 
Even those of stern judgment are led into 
purchases they afterward regret, carried 
away by the excitement of the moment. 
The seductive voice of the auctioneer, the 
passion for possession, the rivalry of the 
bidders, and the excitement of the hour, all 
exert their influence and combine to weaken 
even the most stoical and wary. The fly 
is placed temptingly upon the current, and 
instantly it is seized. 

Again, you dive into the foreign book 
pamphlets, where a coveted treasure is 
catalogued, almost inevitably upon appli- 
cation to find it "sold," the prize is so far 
out of reach. But how elated you are 
when you do secure a long-sought prize, 
and after repeated attempts a tall old copy 
in perfect condition and in lovely first letter- 
press rewards your endeavors ! 

Sainte-Beuve speaks of "the smiling and 
sensible grace of Charles Lamb." I am 
inclined to think the latter's characteristic 
good humor was in part due to the facility 
with which he procured the rare old edi- 
tions he loved. They were easier to lift 
from the shelves in Lamb's days than now, 
and the old book-dealer possessed far less 
"Imperfect Sympathies" than the hardened 
modern Autolycus. 

My interpretation of Montaigne by Flo- 
rio, ' ' thick folio, large copy, old calf, neat, 



Authors and Readers. 267 

scarce, 1632," and its predecessor of 16 13 
that lend such dignity to their companions 
in old calf, were not obtained without per- 
sistent efforts. Sometimes I think many 
of my old books are not unlike Sir Roger 
de Coverley's fox, whose brush cost him 
fifteen hours' riding, carried him through 
half a dozen counties, killed him a brace of 
geldings, and lost above half his dogs. But 
one's rare editions need no brass nails to 
record their bewitching title-pages or mark 
their place amid the vistas of the shelves. 

Preferable to the editions of 16 13 and 
1603 is the later edition, the former lacking 
the index, though containing the fine por- 
trait of the translator by Hole. Florio's 
strong and masterly English has well re- 
flected the original. I regard his translation 
as far superior to the more generally accept- 
ed version by Cotton. Cotton is frequently 
more literal ; but Florio, despite not unfre- 
quent interpolations and slight departures, 
comes nearer to the coloring and pictur- 
esqueness of the text. Take the spirited 
passage of the hare and the harrier, for in- 
stance : 

Ce lieure qu' vn leurier imagine en songe : apres 
lequel nous le voyons haleter en dormant, allonger la 
queue, secoiier les jarrets, & representer parfaitement les 
mouuemens de sa course: c'est vn lieure sans poil & 
sans os. — Book II, chap. xii. 

The Hare that a Grey-Hound imagines in his sleep, 
after which we see him pant so whilst he sleeps, stretch 



268 The Story of my House. 

out his Tail, shake his Legs, and perfectly represent all 
the motions of a Course, is a Hare without Furr and 
without Bones. — Cotton's translation. 

That Hare, which a grey-hound imagineth in his 
dreame, after whom as he sleepeth we see him bay, 
que^:, yelp, and snort, stretch out his taile, shake his 
legs, and perfectly represent the motions of his course; 
the same is a Hare without bones, without haire. — Flo- 
rio's translation. 

Equally well rendered, and an excellent 
specimen of the translator's style, is the 
passage of Volumnius referring to the elec- 
tion of certain Roman citizens as consuls: 
"They are men borne unto warre, of high 
spirits, of great performance, and able to 
effect anything; but rude, simple, and un- 
arted in the combat of talking ; minds truly 
consulare. They only are good Pretors, to 
do justice in the Citie that are subtile, cau- 
telous, well-spoken, wily, and lip- wise." 
Florid and redundant, Florio nevertheless 
employed his words as Walton did his frog ; 
and in numerous passages he out-Mon- 
taignes Montaigne, his vocabulary, as Mon- 
taigne says of the Italian cook's, being 
"stuffed with rich, magnificent words and 
well-couched phrases; yea, such as learned 
men use and employ in speaking of the 
Government of an Empire." 

Speaking of Florio's rendition, the son- 
net Concerning the Honour of Bookes — 

Since honour from the honorer proceeds, 



Authors and Readers. 269 

etc. — is well known. Not so familiar, 
however, the preceding lines, likewise pre- 
fixed to the editions of 16 13 and 1632, and 
relating equally to books. The sonnet, 
which has no name attached and which 
was naturally attributed to the translator, 
is now generally thought by critics to be 
by his friend Daniel, "of whom it is abun- 
dantly worthy, and, indeed, most character- 
istic in sentiment and diction," observes 
David Main. The somewhat extended 
eulogium of author and translator is worth 
transcribing for those who may not be 
familiar with it. It corroborates, withal, a 
view regarding the increasing multitude of 
books, a multitude increased a thousand- 
fold since Daniel's time, that I have previous- 
ly touched upon. Relating as it does to the 
French philosopher, it may well be diffusive. 
But no extended transcription of an old 
author can stand out upon a modern page 
with the vividness it does in a well-pre- 
served old edition. Apart from the charm 
of antiquity, the old edition has an added 
virtue which the new edition lacks — the 
odor that clings to a venerable tome, a 
fragrance as of the everlasting or immor- 
telle of the autumn fields, lingering amid its 
ancient leaves. Nor is this altogether fancy ; 
the faded pages recall the ashen hue of the 
flower, and like it they survive to preach 
the sermon of immortality. 



270 The Story of my House. 

Daniel's lines are thus inscribed: "To 
my deare brother and friend M. John Florio, 
one of the Gentlemen of her Majesties most 
Royall Privie Chamber": 

Books, like superfluous humors bred with ease, 
So stuffe the world, as it becomes opprest 
With taking more than it can well digest; 
And now are turnd to be a great disease. 

For by this overcharging we confound 
The appetite of skill they had before : 
There be'ng no end of words, nor any bound 
Set to conceit the Ocean without shore. 
As if man laboured with himselfe to be 
As infinite in writing, as intents; 
And draw his manifold uncertaintie 
In any shape that passion represents : 
That these innumerable images 
And figures of opinion and discourse 
Draw'n out in leaves, may be the witnesses 
Of our defects much rather than our force. 

But yet although wee labour with this store 
And with the presse of writings seeme opprest, 
And have too many bookes, yet want wee more, 
Feeling great dearth and scarcenesse of the best; 
Which cast in choicer shapes have been produc'd, 
To give the best proportions to the minde 
Of our confusion, and have introduc'd 
The likeliest images frailtie can finde, 
And wherein most the skill-desiring soule 
Takes her delight, the best of all delight, 
And where her motions evenest come to rowle 
About this doubtful center of the right. 

Wrap Excellencie up never so much 
In Hierogliphicques, Ciphers, Caracters, 
And let her speake never so strange a speech, 
Her Genius yet findes apt discipherers: 



Authors and Readers. 271 

And never was she borne to dye obscure, 
But guided by the Starres of her owne grace, 
Makes her owne fortune, and is ever sure 
In mans best hold to hold the strongest place. 
And let the Critick say the worst he can, 
He cannot say but that Montaigne yet 
Yeelds most rich peeces and extracts of man ; 
Though in a troubled frame confus'dly set, 
Which yet h'is blest that he hath ever seene, 
And therefore as a guest in gratefulnesse, 
For the great good the house yeelds him within 
Might spare to tax th' unapt convoyances. 
But this breath hurts not, for both work and frame, 
Whilst England English speakes, is of that store 
And that choice stuffe as that without the same 
The richest librarie can be but poore 
And they unblest who letters doe professe 
And have him not : whose owne fate beats their want 
With more sound blowes than Alcibiades 
Did his Pedante that did Homer want. 

My 1603 folio Florio bound by Roger 
Payne, my Foppens's Elzevir with autograph 
and annotations of Moliere, my 1 580 Bour- 
dens edition placed in its robe of honor by 
Derome — all these my ship contained among 
her precious stores. 




XIV. 
THE PAGEANT OF THE IMMORTALS. 

Hi sunt Magistri qui nos instruunt, sine virgis et 
ferulis, sine cholora, sine pecunia. Si accedis, non dor- 
miunt; si inquiris, non se abscondunt; non obmurmu- 
rant, si oberres; cachinos nesciunt, si ignores. — Richard 
de Bury. 

Pour peu qu'il soit tenu loin du chaud et du frais, 
Qu'on y porte une main blanche et respectueuse, 
Que le lecteur soit calme et la lectrice heureuse . . . 
Un livre est un ami qui ne change jamais. 

Jules Janin. 




have two chairs for my reading 
— a stiff one for books I have to 
read ; a luxurious one for books 
I like to read. My luxurious 
chair is of dark-green leather, a 
seat to sink into, modeled after the easy 
arm-chair of the Eversley Rectory, known 
from its seductive properties as "Sleepy 
Hollow." When I find a volume more 
than usually delightsome, I call in an extra 
chair for a foot-rest, so the body may pos- 
sess the same ease as the mind. And yet 
the delight a volume affords depends large- 
ly upon the mood in which the leaves are 



The Pageant of the Immortals. 273 

turned, and the printer who has turned the 
leaves. 

A fondness for reading the old book 
catalogues is apt to prove not only an ex- 
pensive luxury, but consumes a great deal 
of time. For no catalogue may be hastily 
skimmed through. The least attractive list, 
composed largely, it may be, of works on 
theology, mineralogy, theosophy, or juris- 
prudence, may contain the precise book you 
are searching for. The most attractive lists 
must naturally be perused carefully. In 
fact, reading catalogues is like reading 
books — even with attentive reading one 
is liable to skip a title, or, at least, overlook 
its real significance, just as one may not al- 
ways grasp the true meanings of an author 
upon first perusal. Then, one subject or 
one title leads to another, and the catalogue 
must be reread. Even when you have made 
out your list, it occurs to you that half or 
three quarters of the lot you have selected 
will undoubtedly be "sold" ; and having 
left out a number you really desire, you go 
over the catalogue still more carefully a 
third time for "substitutes." Not only 
this, but the catalogue differs from a book 
in that it can not wait or be put off. It 
must be studied immediately it is received ; 
or some one else gets the advantage, as 
some one else living nearer by generally does. 

If the business you have on hand pre- 



274 The Story of my House. 

vents your devoting the necessary time to 
the catalogue or catalogues, you are haunted 
with the feeling that it contains a prize, and 
that you may not catch the first mail. In- 
deed, should any of the lists contain, at 
anything like a reasonable figure, that scarce 
old Herbal, an ancient angling tome, or a 
certain edition of Les Caracteres, which you 
have long been searching for, you ought to 
telegraph for it without a moment's delay. 
You know Smith will read his list the min- 
ute he receives it. He is already far richer 
in La Bruyeres than you are, and never 
ceases collecting them. And although he 
already has the edition you desire, it is ten 
to one if he sees it offered at a bargain in fine 
antique binding he will duplicate it. There 
is no such contingency as his skipping it. 
He never skips — he secures and exults. 
His library shelves groan with La Bruyeres. 
Were he rich he might be forgiven ; but all 
his prizes have been hooked by careful 
angling, and are a triumph to his skill and 
monumental industry. 

Charles Asselineau, in the unique little 
volume L'Enfer du Bibliophile, draws a 
sharp line between the true book-hunter, 
who makes use of his own knowledge, 
patience, and industry, and the hunter by 
proxy, who bags his spoils through cun- 
ning other than his own — "the rich and 
lazy amateur who only hunts by procura- 



The Pageant of the Immortals. 275 

tion and trusts to the care of an accom- 
plished professional to whom he gives carte 
blanche, and who despises him — ay, who 
despises him, as the game-keeper and 
poacher always despise the indolent and 
unskillful master who triumphs through 
their skill." The opening sentence of the 
volume is worthy of Sterne : " Oui . . . 
I'enfer ! is it not there that one must arrive 
sooner or later, in this life or in the other ; 
oh all of you who have placed your joys in 
voluptuousness unknown to the vulgar?" 

On the other hand, you have the alterna- 
tive of neglecting your business and attend- 
ing to the catalogues. In any case, the 
book catalogue is an attraction and a bane. 
If you are niggardly and only order a vol- 
ume or two, you are generally disappointed ; 
if you are in a liberal mood, and order a 
number, thinking you will only obtain a few, 
you are likely to get a lot of books that will 
deprive you of getting others you really 
require. Then the works one continually 
sees that one can not afford, the columns 
of temptations all crying, " Farewell ! thou 
art too dear for my possessing " — the Paris 
catalogues in particular, so rich in their 
embarras de richesses. There is a stanza 
of Clough's that may be cited as pertinent 
to book-hunting : 

They may talk as they please about what they call pelf, 
And how one ought never to think of one's self, 
18 



276 The Story of my House. 

How pleasures of thought surpass eating and drinking, 
My pleasure of thought is the pleasure of thinking 

How pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho ! 

How pleasant it is to have money ! 

Possibly the old book catalogues are sent 
as a lesson in self-control, and to teach one 
to endure disappointment as patiently as 
human nature will allow. 

Not the least interesting volume of my 
library is my herbarium. Still every pressed 
flower retains much of its original color, re- 
viving the scene of many a pleasant ramble. 
Commencing with the first cluster of spring 
beauty and white shad-blow spray, and 
ending with the last purple aster and blue 
gentian of autumn, it is thus a sentient 
floral calendar — a fragrant anthology of the 
seasons. It is one of my pleasantest vol- 
umes for winter reading, every flower of 
which is a chapter written by Nature her- 
self. This involucre of white dogwood, 
for instance, becomes a vernal landscape 
riotous with bloom, while these feathery 
mespilus blossoms bring up the April hill- 
sides sprinkled with hepaticas and violets. 
This bunch of trilliums recalls a distant 
beechwood in early May carpeted with the 
snowy triangular flowers and misty with 
the beech's unfurling leaves. 

And this pink lady's-slipper! 

Once more I trace the sinuous curves of 
the Wiscoy and am lulled by the drowsy 



The Pageant of the Immortals. 277 

murmur of the stream. How cool the 
water swirls beneath the overarching hem- 
locks, and how it is churned into foam in 
the deep, dark pool at the tail of the rapid, 
where I know the big trout I hooked and 
lost the previous year is waiting for another 
taste of my " cochybondu " ! It is just at 
the base of the steep shaded hillside where 
the sun never penetrates. If my trout 
chooses to display his rubies and chryso- 
beryls he must thread his way up the cur- 
rent or float down to the meadow far be- 
low. When I have hooked and basketed 
him, another big fellow will occupy his 
place in the same deep, dark pool. 

It is the choice spot of the stream within 
a reach of half a mile, and invariably holds 
the strongest fish and most accomplished 
taker of ephemera. His pannier must needs 
be large, so many flies and midges and 
worms and bugs and beetles drift past his 
lair, and are sucked in by the eddy into his 
awaiting maw. The sudden dive of a wa- 
ter-rat proclaims a rival angler, who may 
also have his eye on my trout, and bring 
him to bag, perchance, if I miss him to-day. 

An aroma of mint, mingled with the 
fragrance of wild flowers and ferns, follows 
me along the banks ; and there, in the 
swamp where the partridge drums, my 
piflk lady's-slipper gleams. The twisting 
roots of the hemlock plunge deep into the 



278 The Story of my House. 

pool ; and with a slap of his red tail the big 
trout rises just beyond them in the foam- 
flecks of the eddy, precisely where he rose 
the previous year. How the water growls 
round the bank it has mined, and chafes 
and scolds at the obtruding prongs ! And 
how picturesquely, too, the old hemlock 
leans over the stream, shading the trout for 
the last time! Another athlete and trained 
fly-catcher must lead the somersault acts 
hereafter; for a day at least the small fry 
may rest secure. But, alas ! with a sudden 
rush, my trout has wound the leader fast 
around the hemlock's roots, as he has 
wound so many leaders before ; and, with 
a farewell flash of his encarmined sides, I 
seem to hear his parting message: "Multce 
lapsce inter truttam et bascaudem sunt ! ' ' 
The pressed flower remains to remind me 
of the struggle and my June holiday. 

Looking now at the pink lady's-slipper 
from the Wiscoy woods, I am glad, after 
all, I did not take my trout, however great 
a triumph his capture might have afforded 
me at the time. For, if the water-rat has 
not caught him meanwhile — and the maxim 
the trout flung at me virtually precludes this 
possibility — he is undoubtedly still swim- 
ming in his favorite pool. Granting I had 
caught him and that a fish of equal size had 
taken his place, it would yet be another 
trout, not my trout which I hooked and lost. 



The Pageant of the Immortals. 279 

The stream flows more musically and more 
limpid to me knowing he is still stemming 
the current, and that he regained his free- 
dom. 

This spike of cardinal flowers carries me 
a hundred miles away; and once more am I 
drifting down the Oswego River on a hazy 
autumnal afternoon, indifferent whether the 
great green bass rise or not, so golden is 
the September day. It is enough to be 
idling beneath the roar of the rapid, to mark 
the different hues of the water, the play of 
the slanting sunbeams, the undulations of 
the wooded shores. Surely the landscape 
needs no more. Ah, yes! just that bit of 
color skirting a still bayou, the flame of 
cardinal flowers and their reflected images 
below. What an illustrated volume! the 
imperial folio of the seasons! And what a 
succession of illuminated pages it discloses 
from the rubric and the preface until the last 
leaf is turned! every subject indexed and 
paged by the grand author, Nature; its types 
as fresh as if they had only run through one, 
instead of thousands of editions. 

In dreams do I behold in all the great 
libraries the procession of the books that 
nightly emerge from the seclusion of their 
shelves — countless flowers from the Muse's 
hill and garlands from the meadows of the 
classics. At a signal from the most anti- 
quated tome, I see a sudden movement 



28o The Story of my House. 

among their ranks, and hear a rustling of 
innumerable leaves, as the souls of the im- 
mortals are quickened into life, and the 
spirits of old authors assemble for converse. 
Platoons of majestic folios, some in calf, 
some in sheep, and some in stamped pig- 
skin appear, columns of venerable and vel- 
lumed quartos, tiers of tall octavos, troops 
of lovely Elzevirs, Aldines, and sedate black- 
letter editions file by with measured tread. 
Volumes black with age move with step as 
elastic as those clothed in more modern 
garb. Indeed, old and young seem to be 
indiscriminately mingled, without regard 
to costume or richness of attire. Only, I 
observe that the procession is composed 
solely of the dead. 

I notice,, moreover, that it is only the 
books of real merit or great renown that 
are called to take part in the pageant ; and 
that the participants vary with each suc- 
ceeding night, appearing entirely without 
regard to chronological order, though all 
the beautiful world of belles-lettres, philoso- 
phy, and science that has charmed and 
instructed mankind throughout the ages, 
forms the processional. Thus a copy of 
Plato and a first folio of Shakespeare pass 
by, side by side, followed by The Canter- 
bury Tales and the Faerie Queen, hand in 
hand. Or is it Goethe's Faust and Plu- 
tarch's Lives ? It is sometimes difficult to 



The Pageant of the Immortals. 281 

catch the titles, so numerous are the vol- 
umes that take part. As the eye becomes 
accustomed to the dimness, the titles are 
more easily traced, and I distinctly recog- 
nize Horace and Virgil, Milton and Keats, 
Herrick and Hood, Montaigne and Pascal, 
Lamb, Thackeray, Cervantes, Moliere, Theo- 
critus, Dante, Schiller, Balzac, Dumas the 
Elder, Pope, Burns, Goldsmith, Addison, 
Hawthorne, Bulwer, Dickens, Irving — until 
the eye is dazed at the multitudinous names. 
Night after night the procession forms and 
the participants vary — there are so many 
volumes to take part, so many that may 
not be overlooked. Richard Jefferies, his 
beautiful thoughts scarcely dry on the page, 
I note has just been called forth from the 
shelves, and Thoreau has already marched 
with Walton and Gilbert White. 

Although not assisting in the pageant 
itself, there are, I perceive, numerous vol- 
umes that, nevertheless, appear to be in 
communication with such of their compan- 
ions as have responded to the signal. Beck- 
oning glances from those below are an- 
swered every now and then by faint 
responses from the volumes above, their 
leaves as yet unfoxed by Time. Of these 
latter there are many, and I soon perceive 
that they bear the names of living authors 
of note who must wait until their earthly 
life is spent ere they too may answer the 



282 The Story of my House. 

roll-call and take rank with the immortals. 
How, apparently without volition of their 
own, as if touched by an unseen hand, the 
leaves of In Memoriam rustle and the pages 
of The Autocrat flutter ! 

The only participants I see that seem to 
be out of place assemble once a year in 
solemn conclave, conversing, it is true, but 
wearing a dejected look. Countless vol- 
umes, these, principally first and rare edi- 
tions, many bound in lovely leathers, ex- 
quisitely gilded, lettered, and tooled, bear- 
ing innumerable stamps and monograms, 
coats-of-arms, and ancient book-plates. 
Many of them I recognize as having seen 
before in high spirits, discoursing with their 
companions during the hour of the nightly 
pageants. This yearly and unusually large 
gathering, characterized by its extreme grav- 
ity, puzzled me at first, until I discovered it 
was composed of the ghosts of borrowed 
books, unhappy in their covers, lamenting 
the loss of their former possessors who had 
once cherished them so fondly. I see, 
too, Boccaccio's II Decamerone, Brantome's 
Dames Galantes, Balzac's Physiologie du 
Manage, La Fontaine's Contes with the 
Eisen, De Hooge, and Fragonard plates, and 
in yonder soiled, foul-smelling tome I per- 
ceive the smutty old satirist and Doctor- 
Franciscan Rabelais. Why he should be 
called out at all, seems a mystery, his pitch 



The Pageant of the Immortals. 283 

is so defiling, and his boluses are so nause- 
ating. 

Some participants there are which at 
first baffled my comprehension. These, 
though perfectly composed themselves and 
mingling freely with their fellows, never- 
theless appear to excite an inordinate curi- 
osity among their companions which is 
never gratified. The titles they bear are 
plainly discernible ; but only when the 
march becomes sufficiently animated to 
cause a violent fluttering of the leaves can I 
catch a glimpse of the author's name on the 
title-page. Then I discover these numer- 
ous tomes invariably reveal the name of a 
most voluminous and versatile author, whose 
personality it is impossible to fathom, an 
author writing with equal facility in all lan- 
guages and on all topics, in poetry and in 
prose, persistently preserving his incognito 
under the name of "Anon." 

I see, also, participating in the pageant 
semi-annually, and on these occasions di- 
recting, as it were, the imposing march of 
the volumes, numerous men of middle and 
advanced age that seem to exhale an odor 
of musty tomes. Occasionally these pause 
in their march before some one of the shelves 
to take down a volume which I have not 
before seen in the procession, handling it 
with reverential care, as if conscious of the 
gems it enshrined. Sometimes it is a vol- 



284 The Story of my House. 

ume by a living author of note ; again it is 
an encyclopaedia or concordance, or a special 
number of some dusty periodical that has 
long lain unopened. On inquiry of my in- 
formant, I learned that this human element 
consists of the painstaking custodians who 
had the volumes in keeping, the scholarly 
and unappreciated librarians who devoted 
so much labor to the cataloguing and classi- 
fication of their charges. 

Abruptly close the clasps of the most 
venerable tome. Again I hear the rustling 
of pages and folding of covers, as each 
volume returns to its accustomed place 
and once more sinks into hallowed slumber. 
The librarian of one of the great libraries 
where the nightly pageant forms scouted 
the idea of his charges leaving their retreats. 
"Would I not hear them? — besides the 
dust remains undisturbed ! " he replied. 
But a dead author makes no noise and 
leaves no tell-tale traces when he quits his 
tenement of print. Books, so eminently 
human, in the natural course of things must 
have their ghosts. Of course, the librari- 
an's candle would dissipate them, as mists 
are dispersed by the sun. 



-J^uzV A'-- *4v .-/-A -xr 1 -'.':- 



EPILOGUE. 

Was ich besitze, seh' ich wie im Weiten, 

Und was verschwand, wird mir zu Wirklichkeiten. 

What I possess, I see far distant lying, 
And what I lost, grows real and undying. 

Goethe, Faust. 

In the hearts of most of us there is always a desire 
for something beyond experience. Hardly any of us 
but have thought, Some day I will go on a long voy- 
age ; but the years go by and still we have not sailed. 
— Richard Jefferies, The Open Air. 

|NCE more the spring, the sun- 
shine, and the youth of the year. 
As much of contentment, per- 
haps, as the majority may find 
within the confines of brick and 
stone my house has yielded me throughout 
the long months of winter. Grateful I am 
for the comfort it has afforded — its warmth, 
its luxury, its cheer. Yet ever with the re- 
turn of spring and the song of birds, the 
house becomes merely secondary to the 
grounds, the garden, and the charms of 
external nature. 




286 The Story of my House. 

Again I lounge on the grass-plot over- 
looking the river. Once more I watch the 
sparkle of the water and inhale the scent 
of the wild honeysuckle, sentient with the 
sweet breath of the summer. The bees 
hum, the wood-dove calls, the soothing 
roar of the rapids rises and falls. Again, 
through the morning haze, I note the 
pleasure craft idling on the breast of the 
river; while yonder, her painted canvas 
unfurled, a strange craft is slowly rounding 
a curve of the shore. 

Did I say my ship had come ? Alas ! 
the wood-dove only murmured in his 
dream, and my ship sailed past to deposit 
her precious stores at the harbor of my 
more fortunate neighbor. 

My ship was, after all, only one of the 
castles in Spain that we are always build- 
ing — and "these are but my fantasies." 




